We are now on our way to the drill site off the Zambezi River (still well in the Mozambique Channel and too far away to see land).  Both this site and the next are shallow water sites – it is only 400m to the ocean floor.  This means that we will have core on deck every 20 minutes.  With only one and a half days of transit to the ZAM site, we will already be hard pressed to finish processing all the sediment from the MZC site before the first ZAM sediment comes up.  And we still have half the sites and 2.5km of sediment to go!  Needless to say, it is all hands on deck (or rather, in the lab!)  After my three live presentations to schools yesterday, I spent the rest of my shift (plus a little into the next one) photographing all the MZC site forams and uploading them into the database.  Today I have spent approximately 5 hours Photoshop editing those same forams so they can be included in the micropaleontologists’ site report.  I’ve got forams imprinted on my brain, so today I will share some more of them with you.  Tomorrow I will continue on my journey through the various other departments on the ship that support the scientific research being done.  (Teaser photo = G. adamsi; remember, all these foraminifera are single celled organisms the size of a grain of sand!)

G. sacculifer

G. calida

G. siphonifera

S. seminulina

G. pseudomiocenica

N. acostaensis

G. aperatura

G. flexuosa