By Gary Fones
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| Calm seas: Credit: Gary Fones |
12th of May saw some much appreciated calm weather and
lots of science activity aboard the RRS Discovery. Lunchtime saw the deployment
of the PML Buoy Profiler, which is a SSB PhD project (more of this in a latter
blog from Rich Sims, PML).
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| Picture of PML Buoy. Credit: Gary Fones |
Sediment
coring followed this, this is a key activity of any benthic cruise. We are
using a number of coring devices to collect sediment from the seabed beneath
us, which is 100m down. On this research cruise we are using a NIOZ corer which is used to collect sediment (mud) from the ocean floor, a
mega-corer (able to take up to 12 undisturbed samples in clear plastic tubes), and a large SMBA box corer which is designed to take a 600mm square, undisturbed sediment sample up to a maximum depth of around 450mm.
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| NIOZ corer recovered to deck. Credit: Gary Fones |
Wednesday
13th of May started with calm seas and a lovely sunrise. This was
followed by a very successful recovery of the NOCL mini-stable lander that has
been on the seabed the last few days gathering in-situ data (more of this in a
latter blog) which will be used by the scientists to understand processes
happening at the boundary between the sea bed and water column.
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| Recovery of Lander: Credit:Richard Cooke |
