Week Four 6/30-7/6
The team began the week traveling to station 03 at Orphan Knoll, 320 nautical miles off northern Newfoundland. Upon arrival on Tuesday, they successfully obtained 6 usable cores from the first cast. However, the sediment from the second cast was unsuitable for their project due to its coarse-grained. The team then moved to a new site, station 4, just east of Orphan Knoll. This location had deeper waters, resulting in longer days. On Wednesday and Thursday, they performed four casts per day. By Friday, they had collected enough mud after the third cast and deployed an Argo float.
This week the weather took a noticeable change. The days were longer, colder and with frequent fog. We’re planning to head further north along the eastern coast of Greenland. I also spent a good chunk of time on our transit, relabeling all shuttles for the multicorer. I did this because many of the shuttles had different numbers from old attempts at labeling. And the inner plastic tube had no label. This made it difficult to track which shuttles were actually collecting usable cores. Additionally, I made a data sheet to record the sampling data that allowed us to see if the location on the multiorder had any impact on sample success. I was a bit nervous about showing the data sheet to the science crew because no one had actually asked me to do any of this but I had asked one of the senior techs if I could do this in my off time but I am happy to say that my efforts seem to be a appreciated!
