southern most position, we think

we are currently a little further south of the Noyo canyon, N 38
54.2104 W 124 18.2018. the core we are collecting here may help us
further resolve the relations between CSZ and SAF tectonics.

we are just west of an unnamed fault that bounds the southwest
boundary of the Viscaino block. the fault offsets several submarine
canyons. the last potential core site was abandoned as it appeared to
lack a good stratigraphic record (too muddy). we think it is too muddy
as the fault that offset the cayon thusly shut off the sediment supply
here. so, i pointed out to chris that we could constrain the age of
this by coring there. if we can do this, we will be able to determine
a slip rate on this fault. there are currently no estimates of slip
for this fault as nobody has worked on it (it remains unnamed, but we
will name it; it's not my fault, the person it is named after must be
dead).

after this, we will transit further north on the abyssal plain,
downstream of submarine canyons draining the viscaino block. as i
mentioned in an earlier post, these canyons are not connected, in any
way, to sediment draining the shelf nor terrestrial drainages (rivers
or streams).

yet another beautiful day in paradise on this wonderful rust bucket
called the R/V Tommy G. Thompson. i slept a good 9.5 hours, but i am
still tired. still fighting a cold, but i am not getting worse.
finally the air conditioning got fixed. the last couple of days were
terribly hot and i kept falling asleep in the lab. i was really worn
out from the heat. in my berth, i was laying in bed with no sheets and
sweating. last night however i got to use my blanket. love it. i hope
to work on my GSA (geological society of america) meeting
presentations soon. i started one, but not the other.

swells have increased, as is my ginger caps consumption. i feel great!
peace out, Sunshine!

Cascadia and San Andreas

we are currently taking cores in the Noyo channel region. we are
attempting to further determine the earthquake records of the CSZ and
the SAF. we took a core yesterday in the same location from a cruise
in 1999.

later today we will do some more surveying and then run back north to
the northern part of the Viscaino block. there are a couple canyons
that drain the block and are not connected to any river/stream system.
so,,, these canyons have even fewer alternative explanations for
turbidity current triggering... we are quite excited about these
cores. we do not need to leave the Mendocino fault region until
Monday, but we may leave earlier to give us more time to core in
accretionary slope basins on our return transit. we will also be
collecting more bathymetric data and more sub-bottom data.

i am still feeling a little ill (not sea-sick). the seas are rather
mellow and this is good for coring and general morale. everyone is
having a good time. danielle is back up and running (she had a back
injury almost a week ago; i have been avoiding heavy lifting, don;t
need to get a helicopter lift to a hospital).

our point mag instrument (for collecting magnetic susceptibility data)
is no longer working properly, so we will have tons of work to do when
we return to corvegas.

i started my powerpoint for my talk at geological society of america
meeting a couple days after we return. i am gonna go to hurricane
ridge in the olympics on my way back to home after the cruise. chicken
my cat is doing well, according to my friend morgan who is taking care
of her. THANKS MORGAN! time for some lunch, it is about 4:45 AM. did
not have much of a breakfast at midnite.

peace out, jay

moving south of the Mendocino fault, going towards Noyo channel

we are now transiting to the Noyo channel core site. we have had
decent luck coring in the MDZ...

passing over the Viacaino block, pretty unstratigraphic (hahaha). we
plan on coring where cores were collected in 1999. we want a clean
core so that we can CT-scan it. the one we have has had samples
removed, so the CT-scan is not very good. we are on a 75 nautical mile
transit, followed by a 15 mile bathy/sub-bottom survey.

the biggest problem we have currently is that there is a part of the
cable (that we use to lower the corers to the sea floor) that has
broken strands in it. we do not really know exactly where in the cable
this problem is. so, when we get to the site, we will lower a kasten
core ( 8" square corer, about 10' long, designed to collect large
volume cores as the foraminiferid abundance is low here and we need
larger sediment volumes to get enough foram fossils to obtain a
radiocarbon age) to see if the wire is long enough to core at Noyo.
the site depth is ~3320 m. we know we can core to 3088m, but not how
mych deeper. we do not want to lose our coring equipment, nor injure
any person (if the cable breaks, people could get hurt, the tension at
3300 m from just the cable is 4,620 pounds at 1.4 lbs per meter in
water).

more later, back to work... love it! cruise is going great. all in
upbeat mood. danielle with back injury is back to standing up (she was
stuck in bed for a week). peace out, jay

south of eel river canyon, adjacent to unamed canyon (could be called bear river canyon)

good morning, Sunshine!

we are currently bringing up core TN0909_10JC, our tenth core. we are
looking at stratigraphy in the Mendocino deformation zone, aka, THE
TRIANGLE OF DOOM! we want to be able to deconfound the stratigraphic
relations between Cascadia subduction zone, San Andreas fault,
Mendocino fault, and other crustal fault ruptures.

saw a whole bunch of dolphins yesterday. the weather is perfect coring
weather. it has been sunny to partly cloudy. we had a few sprinkles
yesterday, but that has been the limit of precipitation. i love the
view of the coast range from the ship. i can see the Mad River Valley,
Fickle Hill, South Fork mountain, etc.

last night i got the longest sleep of the cruise, about 7 hours. gotta
go, the core is about to come up on deck and i need to eat a quick
bite of food before my shift starts. peace out, jay

ill, but chill

well, yesterday as i went off my shift, i had a total of 10 hours of
sleep for the last 4 days. not enough... i got about 5 last night and
i have a cough and am ill now. but, i am acting chief scientist and
looking for another core site. the last core site i chose was the best
core site yet for the cruise.

the point mag sus equipment is now set up to be manually run. so, it
takes 2 people 3 hours to run a single core section. it normally took
2.5 hours for one person before... since we are short on science crew
on my watch, i am prioritizing core descriptions. it is simply a
better way to spend our time.

ok, back to core site planning and main lab / core description science
managing... i will try not to fall off the stool as i watch the data
accumulate (i have almost passed out twice so far this morning... need
more sleep to get better, but i do not have that luxury right now.. if
i get sicker, i may not have a choice,, hahaha,,, such is life. i can
sleep in a couple weeks)

peace out from the nite shift,,, jay

coring and coring, love to core

we are having great luck in coring... we recently recovered our 6th
piston core. the 3.5 kHz seismic data (showing sub-bottom profiles of
sedimentary layers) is successfully capturing the same stratigraphy
along strike. we can follow individual strata as we move south along
the subduction zone trench. we have been coring in the trench (abyssal
plain) and have been obtaining 5-7 sections (each ~1.5 m long).

we have been having problems finding good core sites in the shallower
basins of the accretionary prism in the continental slope. there is
rugged topography and the seismic data get confounded by this (the
best situation for seismic profiling is over flat topography as the
seismic waves bounce off a large area of ground, so if there are
cliffs adjacent to the flat area, we see both sets of "returns" and it
is difficult to distinguish the data from only a specific area; so,,,,
it is really hard to see the sub-bottom strata here). we would like to
core in the shallower areas so that we will have more foraminiferid
fossils (calcium carbonate shells for radiocarbon age control).

i saw several dolphins the other day. after that, people saw the same
group and noticed that some were the type that do not have a dorsal
fin. then yesterday we got too see a short shark. it was swimming
along side our ship. apparently this is rather rare and some on board
with more ship time than i said they had only seen a shark once
before. lucky me (and us).

back to work! i hope i get more than 3 hours sleep tonight. my shift
is 12 midnight to 12 noon and it is difficult to shift my body
clock... blessings, jay

work, work, work

we recently recovered our 3rd piston core... it is now cut up (in 1.5
m sections max length) and being analyzed for density, magnetic
susceptibility, P-wave velocity, and resistivity. once that is done,
they wil be split and sent to the main lab to be described.

i have been describing cores, managing scientists in the main lab,
working on developing site slection using multibeam data and 3.5 kHz
sub-bottom profile data, and fixing computer/technology problems.
feeling rather satisfied. the last 2 days were 16-17 hour shifts (even
though i am scheduled for only 12). last noght i finally got 6 hours
sleep, better than the single hour i got the night before! we are
short on science crew, so we probably will not be able to complete all
of our tasks as we would have liked.

basically, even though there have been some substantial problems, most
all is proceeding rather well. i am no longer sea sick and feel great!
a beautiful Sunshine sunrise today, brought up beautiful thoughts of
all my friends as i looked to the east to see the horizon of the coast
ranges above Crescent City (approximately where we are currently
stationed, near the Smith River submarine canyon.

ok, back to fixing the point magnetic susceptibility equipment. it has
ben malfunctioning the entire cruise. we have fixed several problems,
but others seem to pop up. the person who constrcuted it (while i am
thankfull for their effort as we would not have it withought them) was
not an electrician (even though there are some crafty electronic feats
that were mounted to make it work).

godd morning, Sunshine!