last night, to which i was only a partial observer due to having slept through
my alarm (drasted six hrs of continuous sleep, feels guilty but overall is a
good thing...). we have had horrible luck with our 2.5" gravity cores (a.k.a.
benthos cores). the last two we have deployed were brought up on deck with
strange contents. while the outsid eof the barrels were coated in mud for
between 2-3 meters, the liner contents inside recovered only 10's of cm of mud.
stranger yet, could it get any more, was the water coloumb (i mean column,
maybe, heheheh) above the recovered sediment was a chocolate milk color and very
opaque. so opaque we initially got excited that we had an entire core of
sediment. while i had tasted some of the water from previous cores (well, at
thousands of dollars a core, how often does one get a chance to taste water from
5-6 km deep?), i chose to not taste this water. this chocolate milk was
confounding. drat, fouled again. so, we found one variable (there are two one
way flapper valves installed at the top of the core to allow water to go up when
the core is penetrating the ocean floor and to prevent water from going down and
washing out the sediment when the core is being raised from the sea floor up to
the ship), the flapper valve had a strange doubel spring on the flapper. so, we
used the other flapper valve and se-submitted our benthos for sampling. 2 hrs
later, we got a core with 30-40 cms of sediment and crystal clear water. this
was good and bad at the same time. no choc milk, but also not much mud. the
sub-bottom profiler (a kudsen 3.5 khz echosounder) data suggested the sea floor
was rather soft (muddy) with some harder (more sandy) strata at shallow depths.
this was just like our rosetta stone site where we recovered 5-6 meters of
sediment with a piston corer. so, we decided to go upslope a little (5 nautical
miles) to a site a wee more sandy where we deployed the piston corer form the
stern a frame (visible on the web cam most of the time). this operation wetn off
rather well as i caught it in60-70 no-flash (not to distract the crew with the
first time attempt very dangerous task) pics form two decks above. wanted to
document for science and for the people working hard. i wanted to stay out of
the way as there were several extra hands already in the way (they did not
realize this of course).
went to sleep to wake up 4 hrs later at 4:20. slept til 6:30. oops. butt (not
really but) i missed the major dissapointed reactions of many aftert the core
was recovered. the trigger core (that triggers the 5,000# weight for the piston
core) sticks in the sea flor first. this core recoverd zero sediment. very very
strange. triangle of dissapointment and confusion. doooohhh. as well, the piston
core recovered only 2.3 ish m of sediment. people's emotions w4re all over the
place. i am glad i missed this. we thought it was the perfect site. we thought
it was better than the rosetta stone. what egos we have? (well, i am the
beginner here... learning form others...) what arrogance? so, now i am awake and
we are folowing a survey i set up last night (glad i thought ahead again)
looking for a new site. right now we are transiting over thick sand, ergo my
time to write (right) this email.of course, my newbie lower self-estem judgement
is questioning all that i have learned so far (in terms of what we think is a
good site with respect to the 3.5 khz data). but that is all i have to go on (of
course in the context of my wonderful humboldt state geology field geomorph
skills, which i rely on heavily and successfully time and time again). good luck
to me.
lotsa squid in the sea at night, feasting on flying fish and other shiny fish.
the moon is bright and so are the stars. my habits are doing well, except fo rmy
chocolate one. i had a discovery several days ago and now they are all gone. i
switched to jelly bellys (uggh, pure sugar, eeewwwhh). need to avoid them, my
candida overgrowht sure craves them though. need to be strong. i am going to go
get some right now though (weak that i am, i cant wait to sleep for a week).
luv you all, even though you are land lubbers like myself. jaysun
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