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Current expeditions

RRS James Cook and RRS Discovery are both currently undergoing refit works. See the expedition pages for more information.

RRS James Cook and Blue Mining

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We awoke this morning to the sight of land (Wales) in the distance. The first land we have seen since Lundy Island, mid afternoon on 1 May.

The lab equipment is being packed away and all the paper work is being completed for the end of the cruise. We have had the group photo, so we really are getting close to the end. There hasn’t been enough time…

We will be back in UK waters shortly so underway sampling will start again. Everyone else is starting to pack up their equipment and looking forward to all the analysis of the frozen filters and samples when they get back to NOC.

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Today has been a quiet day in that everyone has been bent over their laptops securing their data, and log sheets and writing their sections of the cruise reports.

All except the underway samplers who have continued to sample until we left international waters. We are now transiting Irish waters, and will be until tomorrow when we will turn north up…

Today was programmed to be the last on site, so there was lots to be packed in. The last Megacore was completed over night, and the PELAGRAs floats were recovered after 48 hours deployed.

This morning there was a deep CTD and the plan was for a quick turnround and then two more CTDs and a SAPS dip. But the weather has started to turn nasty and the…

Time out here is precious so the nights are busy too. Corinne deployed a new zooplankton net overnight; the last one got ripped as it was hauled back on board and the Mega Corer was deployed again.

Henry, Brian, Sara and Kerstin have worked hard most nights processing the cores when they arrive back on deck. The amphipod trap was recovered in the…

The schedule was changed this morning so that PAP3 could be redeployed.

The deck crew will need all the available space for the PAP1 deployment which will now be just after mid-day. The redeployment went smoothly and PAP3 is now firmly in place. Next on the schedule was the Bathysnap deployment. This is a rig with a timelapse camera system which…

Saturday was so busy I forgot to write a blog entry!

On Friday evening the Amphipod trap was recovered. There was a good haul of the carrion eaters. which are generally quite small (up to 5cm) in this area.

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Today has been a long consolidation day.

Late last night an amphipod trap was deployed, ant that will be recovered later this evening so I will get some pictures then maybe.

Two of the PELAGRA traps which were deployed at mid-night on Wednesday were recovered last night but the third one was only recovered mid-day today, as its signal had not…

So far we have had remarkably benevolent weather and yesterday I caught the sun a little as I was on deck filming most of the day, so today I started by putting sun screen on! It has been needed too as I have spent a good deal of today on deck filming.

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