Today I visited the moon pool. This is one of the coolest places on the Jr. It is located on the drill floor a deck below where my office is located on the Foc’sle Deck (Forecastle). A hard hat and safety glasses are required, ear plugs are suggested too. What is the moon pool? The moon pool is an opening in the floor of the ship, giving access to the water below, allowing technicians or researchers to lower tools and instruments into the sea. Photo credits for this blog, Bill Crawford and John Beck

 

 

Logging the drill hole (Down-hole Logging): After the core has been retrieved from the seafloor, the bored hole is analyzed by the logging technicians. They deploy their instruments using the Moon Pool. Cameras are also deployed as part of the logging process. Instruments are lowered down into a drilling hole to collect measurements of the physical properties of rocks and sediments as well as the structural integrity of the hole. The Triple Combo instrument logs the information about each drill hole. The instruments include a caliper to measure the diameter of a borehole, a temperature sensor to give a temperature profile for the hole and an instrument that measures resistivity. The resistivity of the rock tells scientists if the rock has been altered from fluid flow.