Introduction

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R/V Pelagia Cruise SME 117 INDUS
	Diary overview
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Last night most of the scientific crew got a full night's sleep as we were only running multibeam swath bathymetry all night. As we gathered for our Sunday morning breakfast, which included the normal assortment of cold cereal, cold cuts and cheese, we had the special treat of Hans' special chocolate filled croissants. Immediately after breakfast we ran a Conductivity, Temperature and Depth (CTD) cast in 600 m of water, followed by a multicore. The first multicore over penetrated in the soft surface sediment, so we had to take a second. By around 10 am we were on to the piston core. The first piston core gave us a world of problems. It turns out the liner got loose and we ended up with some of the core with multiple pieces of liner pushed together and the bottom of the core with no liner. It took until well after lunch to fix this and take a second core. Most of the day and evening were spent processing cores. Another group spent the morning and much of the afternoon re-building the seismic sparker unit. In spite of all of our setbacks, we were able to collect a +12.5 m piston core and when the sparker was launched after dinner, it worked as it had prior to the re-build. We shall keep our fingers crossed that it continues to work for the rest of the cruise. Lunch today included a wonderful, Asian inspired sweet and sourish beef soup, steak, fried new potatoes, green beans, asparagus, mixed veggies, apple sauce, and ice cream for dessert. Dinner was pasta with ham and mushrooms, at least that is what the carnivores ate, not sure about the vegetarians. We have been at sea long enough that most of our fresh produce and bread has left us, but I am sure that Hans will take care of us with new surprises. The big event every afternoon is watching the sunset, tonight, it buried itself as a beautiful orange ball, with slats of cloud covering it as it dropped off the horizon, just as the show ends, dinner begins. Tonight, as I was standing my watch, actually sitting it, in the geophysical van, listening to the snap, crackle and pop of all of the equipment, we crossed the Indus canyon, where the bottom dropped off at over 1600 m and then back up, very impressive. We are in for another fun filled day in the Arabian Sea tomorrow with both geophysics and coring scheduled.