Doug LaVigne's blog

Each morning in Kochi we have breakfast at the Best Western Hotel in Kochi city.

When I was up late the other night for my video conferences with my classes back at South Cobb in Austell, Georgia, I took a break and decided to take a walk outside. I would have loved to have seen the sky, but with the clouds the sky was not visible.

If you aren't familiar with our FaceBook page, you should sign up right now and become a fan of the JOIDES Resolution.  One of our readers there posted a great question in response to my posts regarding the incoming Typhoon Vamco approaching us from the South.  I consulted the Captain and he gave me a great r

It’s amazing how after two months on a boat with the same people day in and day out how your nerves start to get a little rattled. Not that we aren’t getting along, it’s just the lack of something new. The slightest hint of something bad or good happening at home and I start to get a little frustrated that I am not there to deal with things. Add a bad video camera into the mix and you might have a really bad mood.

Wrapping up the second to last site might otherwise be an uneventful, if somewhat relaxing occasion. But today was a bit different. Most of the other transits have happened at the end of my shift, when I was really busy or fairly late at night. But today the transit happened at about 1:30pm, and it was a bright sunny day. And more importantly, Captain Alex let me drive.

It was remarkable how many people showed up for the kite contest today. It started as a trickle of people as folks wrapped up what they were working on in the labs and on the drill floor, and before long the heli-deck was packed.

Cores come in 24 hours a day, 7 days a week when we are at a drilling site. They are processed round the clock by the technicians, and then the scientists begin the process of whole round testing. After they’ve had a chance to warm up to room temperature we split them into halves. One half is imaged, described and archived. The other half is the working half. What happens to it? In this blog I’ll try to describe the story of the working half.

Every core that arrives on the JR has to be split into two halves at some point in the process. Much of the information contained in the layers of mud and rock is is damaged due to the invasive nature of the drilling process. To get a clean view of the core as it looked in the ground we must look at the innermost portions of the core. This means cutting it in half. Since cores can come in all consistencies, from soupy mud to hard rock. That means the technicians need to be prepared to cut a wide range of materials that come up in the core liners.

Just a quick update to let you know how things are going.  Drilling is going very smoothly on site U1343.  We are almost done with hole C at this site.  If things continue we should have enough time to get in two more sites before we head to Yokahama.  Pretty exciting, as the opportunity to find out more of the history of the Bering Sea is really close.  I expect t