Blogs

Once again I was talking with Mike Widdowson who was explaining to me the new set of cores now being extracted at our new site and hole. I thought it was interesting because of the wide range of coloration from smooth grey to bubbly and chunky red.

9 October 2009     Oh-oh.  We just started drilling at Site U1349 about a day earlier when we got our first core from "basement".  This is a term geophysicists use to describe the lowest strong, coherent reflector on seismic reflection profiles. 

The main purpose during the Shatsky Rise expedition is to determine the age of the rise and to see, if possible, whether the rise fits the plume head hypothesis regarding its formation.

At 12 midnight, under most circumstances, you would think the day is done and everything is winding down, hardly anyone around or doing anything.

What’s goin’ on out in the middle of the Pacific? Not quite the middle of the Pacific I suppose, but way, way out in the middle of nowhere. We saw a ship yesterday. There was talk of swimming for it to see if they had any beer on board. The temptation was there, but it was far away and moving faster than I can swim.

 We are now half-way through the expedition (6 Oct. 2009, 1 am) at our 3rd site, we are logging and should be done by around sunrise then make our way to site 4. We are watching Supertyphoon Melor but don't think it will affect us in any way. I've learn a lot within this month at sea on the ocean driller JOIDES Resolution.

Well it's been a quietish day of mostly writing. I'm trying to put together the site report for the last site. It is due on Tuesday. We should have it done in plenty time as it was not that complicated for the alteration perspective of Adelié and I.

The Pacific Ocean has seen an active season this year. Two days ago a tsunami hit Samoa and American Samoa after a massive earthquake nearby. There had been a terrible loss of life, my prayers are with those families that have lost relatives as well as loss of property.

 So the drilling comes to an end for this site. We’ve been drilling like mad things, that’s for sure. But the rate of penetration has been pretty slow so, while we get great rocks, we have not got too many of them.

 I was talking with Mike Widdowson (pictured here with Anthony Koppers) about the process of interpreting the data from the cores recovered from the drill site. It is not an easy task. One uses the information gathered from a pin hole in the vertical to extrapolate over a landscape (or seascape) in the horizontal, thinking about it again, definitely not an easy task.