David Edwards's blog

This last piece of the seafloor jigsaw is simply allowed to fall down the drill pipe to land in the hole created by the ROV platform affixed to the ACORK observatory. Its purpose is to make it easier for drill pipe to find the borehole in the seafloor and re-enter it. It landed perfectly, but then toppled over later.

Someone sees a marine mammal and rushes back into the ship to spread the word, and everyone rushes out with cameras. This guy was clearly high on life and throwing himself around out of apparent high spirits. There were many more closer to the ship but they weren’t as flamboyant as this chap.
 

On the last camera trip to the seafloor, 1315m below us, we decorated a load of polystyrene cups and sent them down in a bag. Compare the before and after picture. One can see why the Alvin submersible has to be so strong!
 

The purpose of this trip is to install an Advanced Circulation Obviation Retrofit Kit. The aim of this one is to monitor fluid pressure in sediments either side of the methane solid/gas transition boundary. The pressure monitoring equipment is in one of the ‘bays’ above the welder’s head.

The drill floor is where the lengths of drill pipe are assembled and dropped down to the sea floor. They pass through the floor below which holds this feature, the moonpool. It is a large circular hole that passes through the centre of the ship. The pale turquoise colour in the photo is the open sea beneath the ship.

When on an expedition the ship never sleeps. It’s a 7 day week, each person working 12 hours a day, and then the next 12 hour shift taking over. Shifts may be staggered too: 3-3, 6-6, 7-7. It takes some getting used to that when you wake up, unlike at home, things will have changed while you were asleep.

Here we see Steve Hovan explaining a facet of core interpretation to School of Rock participants Sabreena and Emily. We had a great time, scraping very small pieces off the cores, smearing them on a slide and then looking under the microscope to see what diagnostic features we could spot, varying from clay, dust, foraminifera, diatoms, volcanic glass and coccoliths.

Well, the adventure has finally begun. At 4pm today, four small tugs pushed and pulled us away from Pier A and shepherded us out into the channel. The sun shone, and everyone congregated at the front of the ship and revelled in being under way, and welcomed a change of scenery after 2 days in harbour. Much posing for photographs on the rails, and animated chatter.

Well, after all the anticipation we're finally on board! Now begins the orientation to the ship. Safety lectures, the captain's address, tours of the ship: a maze of staircases  - many of them one way: i.e. the stairs on the port side only take you up, the stairs on the starboard only take you down. Which is port?