Blogs

During hard microscopic works, we can't wait for coffee-break and are looking for making ice-creams and eat them!!

Today, we ate ice-creams in coffee-break before lunch!

Itsuki

Unique, as small as a grain of sand, and extremely important as proxies for studying climate change, foraminifera are single celled organisms that have lived in all types of marine environments since the Cambrian time- 525 million years ago.  

The work week is off to a beautifully sunny start here in the Gulf of Alaska. I say “work week” and “start,” but we are on a floating microcosm out here on the JR, working throughout the weekend and into the next week. To make the most of our time at sea all of our scientists, staff, and crew work 12 hour days for nearly 60 days straight.

Since drilling operations began on June 4th, we started looking at sediment samples recovered from approximately 4,000 m water depth in the Gulf of Alaska. After almost two weeks of drilling, we have recovered several hundred meters of sediment, which will be used to reconstruct the environmental conditions of the northeastern Pacific and the adjacent land during the last 4 million years.

Name: Erin McClymont

Institution: Durham University, U.K.

1. What have you studied/will you study on board the JR?
I will be looking at the gases present in the sediments, and looking to see how much organic carbon, nitrogen and carbonate are present.

2. What is your favorite thing about research at sea?
Being on the ocean.

3. Did you always want to be a scientist?

Read Charles Simic’s poem, Stone, below. It gives us some reflection time on a Sunday on the JR.

The cool thing about the core samples is that they contain secrets of the past, which help us make sense of climate and plate tectonics today and in the future. And even more exciting is that we can definitely say that we are the first people to see these sediments and drop stones! How many things in our natural world can we find that are so new and freshly discovered? Right, not many!

Who says there are no animals on board the JR! There's a small zoo of animals here.

Victoria has had a real close look at the ship and has found that there are lots of animals on board besides those humans who have big stomping feet. Look out for them!

When you think of an Ice Age what do you imagine? Perhaps you think of a scene of the Earth covered in ice, with mammoths and other types of megafauna roaming the land? This image is representative of the Pleistocene Epoch, a period in geologic time ranging from approximately 2.5 million to 12,000 years ago.

Many whales are swimming aroud JR, and they must be watching us and our study!

Huge body of whales, including both baleen and tooth ones, are supported by rich zoo plankton, such as krill, which is eating phytoplankton, such as diatoms.

So, diatoms are so important for marine mammals as well as all organisms like fishes to live in the ocean.

The sign above the entrance to the chemistry lab says it all – Enter here and abandon all hope. Next to the door there is another sign listing the chemical hazards within the lab. Sounds pretty scary or inviting depending on your risk analysis! Would you like to join me as I enter this realm of potential danger?