Weather: Nice and Calm probably no more than a force 2, Significant wave height 2-3m
Location: Loch Broom - sailing to Bara
Food: Sunday Lunch Mmmmmmmmmmmm
Slow news day!!
Hi guys!! Well as the title say's its been a slow news day today. Not much has really happened - we’ve been gravity coring most of the day at various sites just outside of Loch Broom. As described before this is where we drive large pole with a weight on the end so we can extract a "core sample" from the seabed.
About Coring as I haven’t explained it in great depth yet.......
Sediment coring is a common activity for oceanographic ships, and is a way of getting very detailed information about the layers of sediment below the seafloor. Sites for coring are usually chosen based on results of an earlier sidescan/multibeam survey, where target areas have been identified. There are several different types of corer, depending on what sort of sediment is on the seafloor, and what sort of sample needs to be taken. A coring device comprises a steel cable attaching the equipment to the ship's winch, weights to help drive the corer into the seabed, and a steel tube known as the core barrel, which is the part of the corer which is pushed into the seafloor.
Gravity coring uses the weight of the coring equipment to push the core barrel into the soft mud at the bottom of the ocean. Weights may be added to the top of the corer to make sure that the core barrel is pushed far enough into the seafloor sediment. Piston corers are similar, but they have a piston inside the core barrel which provides suction to help pull to sediments up into the core barrel. Once the corer has been brought back on board the ship, the core is removed. Plastic tubes (rather like drainpipes) are used to line the core barrel and keep the sediment core in one piece when it is removed. Cores are split in half lengthways to reveal the layers of sediment inside. Onboard RRS James Cook we store these in fridges to preserve them for later analysis.
http://www.solentwaters.co.uk
The navy boys are out and about today and this morning saw ships from Spain, France and the USA operating about us. New arrival USS Stout (DDG-55) - a Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer also joined in the exercise and spent a few hours operating off our portside at a distance of a few miles.
My morning was spent working with Eamonn trying to get one of the displays working on the bridge that allows us to send them details on areas which we want to survey and routes - known as "survey lines" that we would like them to follow. The walk from the main lab to the bridge is nothing but stairs (and more stairs) and after doing this several times I was quite tired!!
The captain emailed last night and commented on the website - It turns out that I had spelt one of the ships names wrong - I had called the German tall-ship "Alexander Von Humber" when in-fact the ships name is "Alexander von Humboldt". Don't know why I did this as they even gave me a t-shirt with the ship's name on :-s !!! Anyway the Captain seemed happy with the site!! Phewww. Even got a few pictures of him which I will put on the site in the next few days!!
I heard a rumor that we would be going into Ullapool to pick up freshwater today but the morning meeting quashed that idea. An opening in the weather means that it may be possible to go deep-sea and start conducting science around Hatton Bank in the next few days. Hopefully we won't be getting bashed around on Tuesday - my birthday!!
Tradition at sea is that you get the drinks in on your birthday - not bad really as we are only allowed 3 units each and even if everyone turned up it would only cost about £50 to buy drinks for the entire drinking allowance for everyone onboard..... I would probably spend a lot more if I was back home.... Luckily it is also one of the AB's birthdays on the same day!!!
The rest of the day was spent just firefighting minor problems that had occurred during the night and ensuring that the scientific data had been backed up.....
During the afternoon we started steaming towards Bara.
Got my hair cut today - Mark our cook/chef had started commenting that i looked like the 5th Beatle and tonight broke into singing some of the Beatles better known songs when I came for supper.... Jacqui the steward is superb at cutting hair and did an excellent job on mine and Jim the deck engineers hair. I wouldn't trust anyone else to cut my hair onboard a ship.....
Anyway some pics!!
Gavin gets his hands dirty with the gravity core
Darcy on the bridge of the RRS James Cook
The three wise monkeys
Cores from the rock drill
Different sediment/rocks from cores
Long day.
USS Stout (DDG-55)
Jim gets physical with the drill
Scientist with Cores
Marcking up the cores
Jim gets his haircut |