Friday, November 18, 2016

Wrapping up Cruise and Earthquake Response

Our last day has been dominated by high wind velocities (in excess of 50 knots) and large waves (in excess of 20'?). We had to shut down coring and analytical operations today. Lots of water was making its way on deck. The ship was pitching up to 30 degrees maybe, at least 20. We did describe a core, but nobody got hurt. When my colleague started getting ill ("feeding the fish"), I called it a day. I went up to do some computer work on the data and cores, while the other workers did other things (like take care of themselves or read or sleep, etc.). 
 
While working on the bridge, compiling some core data so that we can prepare some material for the cruise report, I got to work more with Dr. Barnes to develop our strategy for investigating evidence from "yesterday's" earthquake. We will be collecting several Multi-Cores in the region of the earthquake. We will also be collecting some high resolution bathymetric data to look for surface rupture of the fault in the seafloor. GNS has teams preparing to further document the terrestrial evidence for fault rupture, but we will be working offshore. I have prepared a map that shows some of the core locations that we hope to visit in the next couple of days. We will be collecting longer Piston Cores at some of these sites also, to evaluate a longer stratigraphic record. The Multi-Cores are only 60 cm long.

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