Introduction

Participants

 

R/V Pelagia Cruise SME 117 INDUS
	Diary overview
Sunday, 4 January 2009
The last work day dawned at last and the ship was swept with an excited end of term feeling that we were at last entering the final phase of our work. We started the day  filling in blanks in the coverage of the bathymetry along the western side of the Indus Canyon and then with that task finished we ran out south into deep water, more 1600 m or about one mile deep searching for where this canyon ended. The time ran out before the canyon did, but we did get some wonderful images of the looping bends and meanders of the channel, looking like some sort of map from Arizona rather than the bottom of the Arabian Sea. With the sun coming up and turning the sky pink we turned tail to the north and back towards land for the last time in order to start a day of relatively shallow but rather numerous cores. As Marcel Bakker rather astutely noted, scientists are never satisfied and always want one more seismic line or core before the end. Indeed 5 pm came and went and our very tolerant Master Cees de Graaff allowed us one more core before the long haul back to Muscat. Amazingly the crew did not throw the chief scientist into the sea at this news but instead pulled the fastest piston core out of the ocean we have seen since the start of the cruise. A really spectacular end to a very professional performance from day one. Much to the mixed joy and disappointment of the scientists the core was rather long and full of sediment. Joy because this core may contain a detailed record of sediment flow in the canyon, which was our objective. Disappointment because this means the party have to work overnight and not sink beers in celebration at the end of the cruise! I suspect the descriptions may get increasing concise as the evening wears on. As I write we are steaming full speed ahead back to Oman, with a long bow wave and churning water spewing out behind us and the warm night wind buffeting the ship on our way home.
Sander and a sea snake	Pelagia sunset