One of our petrologists, in this case Christopher Smith-Duque, must assemble the broken pieces of rock within the core in the correct orientation before splitting can occur. During drilling, the rock being cored often breaks up and turns within the core liner. The petrologist decides the direction that the core will be split and a blue pencil line is drawn lengthwise down the core. The core is then shrink wrapped as a single 1.5 m piece and sliced lengthwise using a rock saw. The split core is then taken out to the core lab, where a small label is attached to each piece for identification purposes. The core is now ready to be studied.

Today is our last day coring at site 1. We have just brought the last core on deck and will begin tripping (removing) the 5.7 km of pipe that is hanging from the ship.