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Laura Hepburn wrapped up warm and working on her sediment samples

RRS James Cook in transit to the South Sandwich Islands

We have finished our work in the Bransfield Strait and now have a three day passage to our next working area near the southern most South Sandwich Island, Thule.

Our route takes us north-east past Gibbs, Elephant and Clarence Islands on a beautiful sunny…

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Livingstone Island

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.

Again we use the conductivity-temperature-depth package to identify anomalous chemical signals in the deep water over the volcanic ridge.…

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Dr Kang and Prof. Willmott at KORDI for the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding

On 25 January 2011, Dr Jung-Keuk Kang, President of the Korea Ocean Research Development Institute (KORDI), Republic of South Korea, signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), which is intended to enhance existing links between our two organisations and develop new collaborative research opportunities.

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Darren showing how it should be done in the galley

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.

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Alfred on the deck of RRS James Cook, iceberg in background

Mud sampling: 28 January 2011

Alfred Aquilina and the sediment sampling team have been working hard in the cold temperature lab to extract water from the stinking mud from around the hydrothermal sites. “The most exciting thing is to see the data that we process on board” says Alfred, “we are really productive at sea; working…

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SHRIMP (Seabed High Resolution IMaging Platform) is towed near the seafloor and the video fed back to the control van aboard the ship

Pinpointing the Vents: 25 January 2011

By Wednesday we have criss-crossed the seafloor with our towed video sled and have mapped out the animal and substrate distribution on the seafloor. The shimmering water, chimneys and areas of hydrothermal mineralization are all clustered near the top of Hook Ridge.

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Doug Connelly deploying the *conductivity, temperature, depth (CTD) package into a calm Bransfield Strait

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.

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ROV Isis

Statement by the National Oceanography Centre: The National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, can confirm that there has been an incident involving the RRS James Cook in which the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Isis came into contact with the ship’s port propeller.

The accident occurred during ROV deployment…

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Jez Evans in action

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.…

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Professor Sir David King

Professor Sir David King will chair the National Oceanography Centre’s newly formed Advisory Council. The inaugural meeting took place on Monday 12 January at the Institute of Physics in London, where Terms of Reference were agreed.

Sir David is Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, Director of…