Six-Day Log

Storegga Slide Coring Cruise

Written by Michele Hatton
Educator & Florida State undergraduate geology student

Saturday, August 28, 2004: Bergen, Norway

We woke early, checked out of our modest but tidy European hotel in the port town of Bergen and caught a taxi to the harbor. It has been raining constantly since we arrived here 18 hours ago. Blue with cold, the ten of us piled in the cab, stuffed our soggy luggage in back, and zipped on over to the harbor four blocks away. Today our thirteen-member science team would settle in on the R/V Knorr, a 300-foot research vessel that would be home for the next two weeks... [Read More]

Tuesday, August 31, 2004: At Sea

We launched and recovered three gravity cores this morning. The first jumbo piston core, JPC-4 was taken after lunch. The JPC is a relatively new technology. It can be driven 80 feet down into the sediment, and thus 80 feet into the history of geologic time. A 5,000-pound weight... [Read More]

Wednesday, September 1: At Sea

...a mobile pore water laboratory, custom-made and decked out with several state-of-the-art-chromatographs that analyze chloride, sulfate, and methane concentrations right there, on board. It was transported to Bergen all the way from California and now sits on the uppermost deck with its large picture window facing out to the sea, a view to die for... [Read More]

Saturday, September 4, 2004: At Sea

...The track moves the core slowly through the MSCL sensors. Every two centimeters, the device activates, shooting compressional earthquake waves (p-waves) through the sediment, then recording the velocity... [Read More]

Monday, September 6: At Sea

The waves continue to batter our ship, but the skies are bright (go figure). We collected a gravity core from one site, then steamed to another for GGC-27 and JPC-28. JPC-28 put the exuberance back into our top geologists. Instead of staying in place... [Read More]

Thursday, September 9: Reykjavik, Iceland

...Tonight, staying true to the tales of sea captains and crews, the ship’s crew descended upon the Dubliner, Reykjavik’s finest, and only, Irish bar. Some of them started at noon. By the time most of the science crew arrived... [Read More]