Introduction

Participants

 

R/V Pelagia Cruise SME 117 INDUS
	Diary overview
Monday, 29 December 2008
I was roused from an uneasy sort-of sleep by Peter Clift, the Chief Scientist, at 8.05. I was completely knackered from yesterday's marathon shift, but was ready to attack today's tasks enthusiastically in the wet lab, 5 minutes later. Today, we intended to sample the east canyon - perhaps the clinoforms. Firstly though, we retrieved the refrigerated working samples from yesterday's coring and completed the U-channel sampling. The initial deployment of the CTD and multi-core sampling passed uneventfully. Our attempt to take piston core samples as we zigzagged the eastern limb of the canyon turned rather dramatic - the bottom-half of the piston came up from the sea bed looking twisted like a dancer high on steroids, in over drive. Nobody is sure what happened, but it appears the piston couldn't successfully penetrate the sediments on the sea floor. Most of the morning was spent dealing with the problem.  Lunch didn't do much to reverse our luck, so subsequent attempts at coring was restricted to multi- and boxcores, as gravity coring also proved, perhaps predictably unsuccessful. We deployed the ever reliable Chirp with relief, at the close of the day, leaving out the Sparker which seemed to have developed technical problems lately, in spite of valiant efforts by Sander, Tim and John to keep it going.  Dinner came and passed unnoticed. An engaging game of dart between free crew members helped what looked like an uneventful day to have a somewhat exciting end. On a good day, I'd have taken to the deck (as most others will just before dinner) to watch the sun's majestic roam of the vast world come to a truly stunning end - a tacit reminder that this endeavor from which I learnt so much and made new friends will soon come to an end.