research at sea

Alex Forryan – Discovery 361 – 03.10°S, 25.10°W

Turbulence measurements: On RSS Discovery cruise D361 turbulence in the upper ocean is being measured at every station using an ISW free-fall vertical microstructure profiler.

David Honey – Discovery 361 – 00.10°N, 24.30°W

Elizabeth Sargent – Discovery 361 – 12.35°N, 22.00°W

Coring at night

We have videoed the many different areas of venting at the seafloor in the base of the Kemp Caldera and now are spending a cold, snowy night coring the mud from the seafloor. Our night shift work is to collect mud from around the areas of diffuse hydrothermal flow.

RRS Discovery UK Nitrogen Fixation - GEOTRACES Expedition 2011

The Axe, Bransfield Strait

Our final site within the Strait is aptly named ‘The Axe’. This is the least studied site that we have chosen to study and first we need to map the seafloor.

Three Sisters, Bransfield Strait

We have spent the weekend surveying our second volcanic target in Bransfield Strait: the Middle of the Three Sisters. Again we use the plume sniffing approach followed by video surveys of the seafloor before choosing our coring sites.

Mud sampling: 28 January 2011

Coring the seafloor: 23 January 2011

Sunday starts with a steam to a new position nearer to the Antarctic Peninsula where we have chosen a site to core the seafloor. Overnight we homed in on the chemical anomalies in the water column that tell us where the vent and seep sites are on the seafloor.

Day 3 – Monday 17 January 2011 – Crossing Drake Passage

Monday and we are out in the Drake Passage: a strong head wind slowing us slightly. Drake Passage, between Cape Horn at the tip of Chile and the Antarctica Peninsular, is a choke point for the Antarctic Circumpolar Current that travels around the continent of Antarctica.