The survey started from Dar-es-Salaam on 16 June. The programme was worked southwards with hydrographic transects and demersal trawling i deep waters to the Ruvuma River on the Mozambican border. On the northward course the continental shelf was covered with frequent trawling on the wider Mafia Island plateau between the rivers Matandu and Ndilila.
Acoustic survey of the southern part of the Zanzibar Channel and the transect Wami - Zanzibar were finished before the call at Zanzibar on 26 June.
After the visit to Zanzibar, the two northernmost transects were carried out, and the coasts of Pemba and the shallow plateau north of Tanga was investigated.
The vessel called at Dar-es-Salaam on 30 June for exchange of personnel, and continued the survey on 1 July.
In the latter part of the cruise, the vessel covered the eastern side of Zanzibar and the slope on the mainland side of the Pemba channel with demersal trawling in deep waters.
The last days were spent in the Zanzibar Channel where a dense grid of demersal trawl stations was planned. The coasts of the mainland and Zanzibar were covered. But an unfortunate breakdown in the hydraulic winch system put an abrupt stop to trawling one and a half day before schedule, and the central part of the Channel was surveyed acoustically only.
The vessel anchored in the lagoon off Mbegani in the evening of 7 July. All the collected basic data and the charts of the survey were duplicated and distributed to the local scientists who left the vessel in the evening of 8 July.
“Dr. Fridtjof Nansen” sailed from Mbegani, bound for Mombasa, at 1830 hours on 8 July 1982.
Charts of the survey routes and stations are given in Figures 1 and 2.
