Coring Cruise: The final day

Even our last day was full of adventure. Today’s experience: vibracoring. 

Near-shore Vibes
Vibracore lifting out of the water. The motor at the top causes the pole to vibrate and sink into the seafloor through the weighted metal base at the bottom.

Our tech problems of last night remained, but we persevered. We may not have had access to the fancy sonars on the boat, but we did have a fish-finder! Using the fish-finding sonar, we were able to watch the vibracore descend to the seafloor.

That’s not a fish!
Matthew Costa holds the transducer pole in the water while Carol holds the fish finder display. In the display, you can see the vibracore approaching the seafloor at a 73.4m water depth.

Still not a fish…
Now Jonathan holds the transducer pole as the fish finder shows the vibracore ascending back up the water column.

We made 5 vibracoring attempts. The first go was not super successful, but after adjusting our rig we got a rather short, but nice and clean core followed by another that recovered slightly more sediment. The last core was lost, but the fourth was the star! This one brought back the most sediment, but we had a bit trouble getting to it because it came back bent.

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With that, It’s time to wrap up!! 

We headed to port cleaning up our work space, labs, and meeting rooms. RR2210 (The official name of our cruise), is folding into memorable days of camaraderie, scientific curiosity, ambitions, paths to future collaborations, and potentially future coring expeditions. 

What a great experience it’s been! 

We’re now heading back to MARSSAM for post cruise processing for rest of the week before we disperse to our own campuses, labs, and homes! Many of us have a busy fall semester awaiting our arrival 🙂

A team made in the sea!
Group photo of most of the science party after getting into Newport.

While we wrap up, we want to give shout outs to a few people who made this all happen.

First, a huge thanks to Mo Walczak, for being the heart and soul of this entire workshop and cruise. We couldn’t have Mo onboard, but she was with us in person throughout this workshop and supported us from shore while we were at sea. 

Thanks to our mentors including Chris Goldfinger, mentor and chief scientist for the cruise; Niall Slowey, Lyod Keigwin, Jerry McManus, Jeff Beeson, and Evan Solomon for sharing their expertise at sea as well as Liz Sikes, Nick Pisias, Mitch Lyle, Ross Parnell-Turner, Daniel Fornari, Maziet Cheseby, Val Stanley, Deepa Dwyer, Sami Cargill, and Alice Doyle who helped to prepare us for this cruise and and our future endeavors.

We are grateful for the skills and wisdom brought by the coring tech team: Paul, Dale, Tom, and Mandy; the restechs: Royhon and Charlie; computing tech Brent; and the entire MARSSAM team!

Another huge thanks to Captain Dave and the crew of the RV Revelle! More than keeping the ship running and getting us where we needed to go, they truly made us feel welcome on board 😀

Thanks also to NSF for funding this endeavor and allowing this all to happen.

Science is full of teamwork. Many of us were strangers just a few weeks ago, but still we formed an amazing team while we were at sea!! Mentors, trainees, techs, and crew… all have been working together to make a great cruise thus far. It’s truly awesome how science brings people together!!

Signing off and returning this web space to it’s original owner – Chris! 

Thanks for reading!!
This blog was written by Margaret Morris and Sajjad Akam on behalf of the whole team:) Thanks to our fellow trainees for your enthusiasm, trust, ideas, and science explanations that made this blog and cruise all that it could be.