This evening the geologists did their first bit of coring of the seabed as part of BAS’s QWAD (Quaternary Western Antarctic Glaciation) project.
Geologists with a piece of the core.
To determine the consistency of the sea floor they send sound waves from the ship to the seafloor using a piece of kit called TOPAS. The sound waves bounce back to the ship where they are received. Some of these sound waves penetrate the sediment and allow a profile to be built up of the sea floor. This allows the geologists to find areas where there is good sediment to sample. If they tried to sample a rocky bottom for example, this would damage the very expensive coring equipment!
They used a piston corer to sample the sediment. They were targeting a sediment drift in which they hope carbonates are preserved. This was in 2300 m of water and they managed to obtain a 10 m long core. Carbonates are critical for isotopic work but unfortunately they are very rare in the Southern ocean. The geologists are hoping that they were able to obtain some carbonates and then they will use these in isotopic studies to build up a picture of past climates (palaeoclimates) and ocean circulation patterns.
From February 19th until April 10th 2008, British scientists are embarking on the British Antarctic Survey’s (BAS) research ship RRS James Clark Ross. This project is part of the BAS program known as BIOFLAME (Biodiversity, Function, Limits and Adaption from Molecules to Ecosystems). Scientists onboard are studying marine fauna from the ocean shelves and slopes from a little-known region, the Bellingshausen and Amundsen Seas. This is part of the Census of Antarctic Marine Life. Follow their route on the CAML-Cousteau Expedition tracking page.