Second day of successful core recovery and we are now getting the hang of the various systems both human and mechanical around the lab that let us get our work done. The human proved more reliable today as one of the physical property machines that measures the speed of sound in sediment decided to throw a fit and refused to work for a few hours, so that our efforts were put on ice until that little hiccup was sorted out.

Fortunately on a ship like this the cavalry came to the rescue pretty fast, and at least we did not get further behind with the work in the lab because the drilling has slowed up considerably. This is because of depth and the sticky nature of the formation, giving the core describers time to get organized. You can see in this photo Kelsie Dadd from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia and Sandra Herrmann, a technician from IODP, working at the core table with the striped cores sitting between them. The dark layers are silty layers within lighter colored clays that represent sediment washed deep in the South China Sea.  Where from?  This remains a point of debate, no doubt to be settled at a later date after a long time in the chemistry labs at home!