Core on Deck!

** Disclaimer: This post has lots of actual geology stuff in it, so feel free to skim over that part straight to the pretty pictures at the end. I won’t take it personally**

Hello again.

Well, we’ve all been incredibly busy the last couple of days which hasn’t really left any time to do anything except work and (try to) sleep, and as you can see, I’m spending my only spare half-an-hour this week updating this blog.
I hope you all feel special.

We finally arrived at our first drilling site early Monday morning (it’s Friday afternoon now), five days of full speed and fine weather from Yokohama. I’ve managed to more or less get the seasickness under control with a combination of hardcore drugs and shear willpower.
Boo yeah.

Our first destination is “Shirshov Massif” which is the northernmost part of the area we’re here to sample. (Yellow blob nearest the top of the map).



Shatsky Rise is basically an ancient, giant, underwater volcano* about the size of California. Yeah, so pretty enormous then.

*Strictly speaking I guess it’s not really a “volcano” per se, (“igneous plateau” might be better perhaps?) but it’s made of the same sort of rocks (basalts etc) that you’d find coming out of somewhere like Hawaii, so for the sake of argument lets call it a volcano.
p.s. Can you tell I’m not an igneous petrologist?

Anyway, the aim of this whole expedition is to core right down into this volcanic rock, get some samples (cores) and figure out how the thing erupted. Simple.

“But what on Earth is someone who’s interested in proper sedimentary rocks like you, doing on an igneous expedition?” I don’t hear you cry.

Well, fortunately for me (and unfortunately for all the poor igneous bods), the ancient volcano has been underwater for so long that a thick succession of sediments has built up on top of it, covering up all of the volcanics under a snuggly blanket of interesting sediments. So to get to the volcano you have to go through the sediments anyway.
Brilliant.

Alas that’s where the good news ends; because sediments are not the primary focus of this expedition we’re only actually coring the bottom 50m or so of the sediments and just blowing a hole through the rest of it.

Well a little bit of rock is better than no rock at all I always say.

So, for the last 5 days we’ve been hovering over the same featureless spot in the Ocean, lowering drilling-pipe through 3654m (that’s 3.6km) of water, and drilling into the abyss.

Because I think some of you might have trouble imagining this, here is a diagram I made earlier:



Boat not to scale. Duh.

So, (to cut a very long and complicated and impressive story disappointingly short), we made a big hole by drilling 70 meters into the sediment, then we started collecting the rocks deeper than that and bringing them back up to the deck for study.
And what do ya know, they’re really interesting!
So for the last four days, I have spent 12 hours a day: staring at them/ scraping them/dissolving them/describing them/ hating them- loving them- it’s a thin line.

And, very occasionally, I get to go outside and watch the sunrise and the rainbows for ten minutes or so. And I like it. And it’s pretty.








Unfortunately there’s a super typhoon heading our way, so we might have to get out of here pretty soon. “Choi Wan” is a huge category 5 hurricane and it’s predicted to brush just a little too close for comfort in a few days time.



The predicted track^ takes it just north of where we are now (160 degrees longitude, 38 degrees N latitude) so I think we’re going to have to pull pipe and run away like a bunch of little girls.
The swell has already started to pick up...I’ll keep you posted...

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