Saturday 12th February

Today's contributor: Jon Copley

After finding the new vent field in Adventure Crater on yesterday's SHRIMP dive, we deployed the CTD probe over its chimneys to collect water for the geochemists and microbiologists to analyse. We then we set course back to the other crater, and collected more water from the vents there using the CTD.

We also collected sediments from around the vents using a gravity corer - a rather beefier system than the megacorer that we used previously to sample seafloor sediments. The gravity corer has a large weight, which enables it to sink deeper into the seabed, and push through layers that may be resistant to the megacorer. The gravity corer returned good samples - including some hair-like polychaete worms.

With our sampling of the craters complete, we began the journey back to the East Scotia Ridge, with the intention of collecing some final samples there on our way home. But the weather had other ideas. On leaving the craters near the South Sandwich Islands, we ran into heavy seas, which slowed our progress, and on arriving at the East Scotia Ridge the seas were too rough to deploy any equipment. So we made the decision to head to our final area for investigation - the seafloor near the island of South Georgia, which is 2.5 days away.



January 2011

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February 2011

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