The ODP Technical and Logistics personnel aboard JOIDES Resolution for Leg 162 were:
Brad Julson Lab Officer
Randy Ball Marine Lab Specialist (Photographer)
Tim Bronk Marine Lab Specialist (X-Ray)
Andy Deady Marine Lab Specialist (Downhole Tools, Thin Section)
Sandy Dillard Marine Lab Specialist (Storekeeper)
Margaret Hastedt Assistant Lab Officer (Paleomagnetics)
Terry Klepac Marine Computer Specialist
Helga Kleiven Marine Lab Specialist
Kuro Kuroki Assistant Lab Officer
Mont Lawyer Marine Lab Specialist (Underway Geophysics)
Jaque Ledbetter Marine Lab Specialist (X-Ray)
Eddy Lee Marine Lab Specialist
Greg Lovelace Marine Lab Specialist (Physical Properties)
Erinn McCarty Marine Lab Specialist (Curator)
Matt Mefferd Marine Computer Specialist
Anne Pimmel Marine Lab Specialist (Chemistry)
Jo Ribbens Marine Lab Specialist (Yeoman)
Bill Stevens Marine Electronics Specialist
Mark Watson Marine Electronics Specialist
Port Call Activities: Edinburgh
The ship arrived two days early, on the evening of 2 July. This was the first time in many years that the ship had a port call in the United Kingdom, and it was a very busy port call. Crew change was on 4 July. There was an off-site EXCOM meeting during the port call, and the EXCOM members later toured the ship. For one day, the general public was invited to tour the ship, and over 800 people visited.
The Lamont Borehole Research Group rebuilt the wireline heave compensator during the port call. At the same time, a new Zeiss Axiophot was installed by Emil Meylan. He also serviced the microscopes and conducted a training session on the new microscope. In addition, the liquid helium in the cryomagnetometer was refilled.
Operations
The ship left Edinburgh on the evening of 7 July for a 2.5-day transit. The first site was FENI-1 in the sediment drifts south of Iceland. Leg 162 was divided into two parts based on the site's position relative to Iceland. We had good weather and good core recovery throughout the leg. In fact, we recovered over 5 km of core in the first month. Due to this incredible recovery, we ran low on supplies by the middle of the leg, so a rendezvous was set up with M/V Strakur from Reykjavik, which brought out core liners and acetone. One of the Lamont loggers returned to shore via the vessel. The plan for the leg was to core the southern sites first and the northern sites last in the hope that the northern sites would become ice free. Unfortunately, this did not happen, so the Svalbard sites at 77° N were the farthest sites we were able to core. On the way back, we were able to core the EGM site, because the ice had receded off the eastern coast of Greenland.
Underway Lab Activities
Routine underway activities commenced soon after we left Edinburgh. Bathymetric data were collected between sites during the transits, and seismic data were collected as we approached the sites. The seismic information was collected at 6 kt using a single 80-in.3 water gun. A new magnetometer, a Geometrics 886, was installed during the first part of the leg. Two new sensors were installed and the magnetometer was connected to the PC running the navigation software, WinFrog. A new version of WinFrog had been installed during the port call, and that fixed some of the bugs experienced in the previous versions. After fine-tuning the signal, the navigation program recorded and wrote the magnetics data to a navigation file every 3 seconds. Unfortunately, we were not able to graph the magnetics on the screen.
We had problems with the guns icing up off the coast of Greenland on our last seismic survey. The water temperature was recorded at 1°C.
Physical Properties Lab
The physical properties lab was used heavily this leg. The stratigraphic correlator set up a station in the lab. The multisensor track (MST) was crucial to this leg in that it provided near-continuous records for hole-to-hole correlation. This equipment allowed the scientists to construct complete stratigraphic sequence cycles, which are the result of paleoceanographic changes. The magnetic susceptibility was the most useful sensor for this. The MST was set on the highest sensitivity level, which meant the slowest speed. A 7-section core took 70-80 minutes to run. There were over 4000 runs on the MST during this leg.
We had equipment problems with the thermal conductivity boxes. The needles were recalibrated many times before the values returned to their original setting. The new thermal conductivity unit was brought out to be tested as a possible replacement for the aging instruments. Unfortunately, it also experienced many problems, and will be sent back for further development.
Core Lab
This was an extremely busy leg in the core lab. Because of the shallow water depths and the high core recovery, the lab could not process the core as rapidly as it was recovered. Consequently, many cores were stored until they could be processed in the lab, and the core lab racks quickly filled. The use of the MST, color reflectance spectrophotometer, and the cryomagnetometer all contributed to this slow movement of cores through the lab. In order to insure proper labeling, new cores were first brought into the lab to be scribed and entered into CoreLog before being moved back outside on the outside core rack. When room was available inside the lab, the cores were shifted back into the core lab, which meant a lot of rehandling. When both racks were full, cores were not cut into sections immediately, but were laid down on the catwalk. When the pace slowed and a place became available in the racks, the core was cut into sections. At one point, there were 40 cores lying on the catwalk with 75 cores waiting to be processed. The cores received on the catwalk were two holes ahead of what was being processed in the core lab. At one point 31 cores were recovered in one 12-hour shift.
This was a high-latitude leg that required installing tarps over the catwalk to reduce the cold, Arctic winds. A water line was plumbed from under the sink in the core lab out to the catwalk so hot water could be used to rinse the catwalk. One nice thing about the northern sites was that everyone was on the day shift. The sun never set below the horizon for weeks at time.
Paleomagnetics Lab
The cryomagnetometer was heavily used this leg. Over 800 cores were run through the instrument at 25- or 30-mT levels, which required a liquid helium refill during the port call. There was an air plug in the fill port, so the rest of the liquid helium in the cryomagnetometer was boiled off in order to melt the plug. The original 100 L of liquid helium was used to cool down the cryomagnetometer. Fortunately, another 100 L was obtained to refill it. A low field was trapped the next day. All in all, with the large amount of core processed through the cryomagnetometer, there were only a few problems associated with the chain and the occasional jams in the dewar.
Chemistry Lab
The chemistry lab was used primarily for water, carbon/carbonate, and gas analyses. Both natural gas chromatographs were used throughout the leg for real-time analysis of hydrocarbons. Only at the Svalbard site did we encounter large amounts of higher molecular weight hydrocarbons. Methane was present at many of the sites. The methods used for the gas analysis were further optimized to reduce the time required for analysis.
Pore water was squeezed from sediment samples and analyzed throughout the leg. The Dionex ion chromatograph ran well, but there were a number of problems with the atomic absorption instrument. Due to the cold environment, acetylene flows were reduced, so the pressures were adjusted to compensate. An air regulator and an ignitor relay were all worked on.
Sediment samples were routinely analyzed on the Coulometer for carbonate content and on the Elemental Analyzer for organic carbon content. A few samples were also analyzed on the Rock- Eval.
X-ray Lab
Many clay sediment samples were analyzed on the XRD. Although no XRF analyses were requested during the leg, a number of major element standard beads and trace pellets were analyzed as unknowns to evaluate the stability of the Leg 161 calibration in preparation for Leg 163. In addition, a new cookbook was developed for the new bead sampler. This was translated from Japanese and edited into a very usable form.
Computers
ccMail was officially adopted by ODP this leg. All personal and official e-mail to and from the ship went through ccMail. This includes scientists, technicians, and Schlumberger employees. As with all new products, there were initial problems, but as personnel became familiar with the program, the problems diminished. Because of the extremely high latitude at some sites, the angle to the communication satellite was actually beneath the horizon. Consequently, it was difficult and expensive to send communications.
Ice maps played an important role in deciding our operations schedule, so we used a Norwegian company, NERSC, to send us maps over the satellite, or to ODP where they were FAXed or FTPed to the ship.
About midway through the leg, a COMPUSERVE science bulletin board was hosted by US News & World Report for two weeks. Questions from subscribers were sent to the ship and posted on the bulletin board. Cruise participants answered the questions and sent the replies back to the COMPUSERVE forum. Most of the questions were about global warming.
Eight new Pentium PCs were received and installed in the labs. These replaced older 386s and are part of our computer upgrade program. A 1.2-GIG disk was installed on the Novell server. A preliminary pre-Alpha copy of the upcoming JANUS database for Curation, CoreLog, and Operations was installed on three PCs to get user opinions. This information will be used for further development.
Curation
As expected on a record-breaking core recovery, paleoenvironmental leg, core sampling was heavy. Half the intensive sampling was deferred to a post-leg sampling party in Bremen, but still over 26,000 samples were taken on the ship. Many people are interested in high-resolution isotope analysis.
Close to 1000 boxes of core were recovered, and these not only filled both the Hold and Lower Tween refrigerators, but the excess core boxes were stored on the gym floor. This is only possible in the high latitudes where the temperature in the gym is colder than the temperature in the refrigerators.
Large amounts of methane were encountered at a couple of sites, so there were the associated gassy, expanding core problems. The gas and the cold temperatures also resulted in broken, shattered, and split liners. There were also many whole-round sections taken for post-cruise geotechnical testing.
Downhole Measurements Lab
Heat flow was determined at four sites using the ADARA downhole temperature probe, which fits into the coring shoe of the advanced piston core (APC) barrel. Four of these runs were dedicated bottom-water measurements. Instead of assuming the temperature of the sediment/water interface, the temperatures from the bottom water runs were extrapolated out to equilibrium to produce bottom-water temperatures. This is analogous to what is done when the ADARA tool is used in the sediments. One of the tools shorted out when the foil strip connecting two of the boards became frayed and came into contact with the inside of the coring shoe. This will be shipped back for repair.
Paleontology/Microscope Lab
There was a service call and a training session by Emil Meylan during the port call, and a new Zeiss Axiophot was installed. The Axiophot features a high-intensity arc lamp for fluorescence illumination. Fluorescence was not needed on this leg so the power supply was disconnected to prevent mishandling. The microscope will also be equipped for use in measuring reflectance on those legs which do not need it for fluorescence. The microscope parts were inventoried at the end of the leg.
The paleontology lab was used continuously by the five paleontologists, and over 2000 samples were examined. The paleontological 4D database, FossiList, was used by only one scientist this leg. She had used it at ODP headquarters before coming out and was familiar with it. The others felt it was too inconvenient to enter data directly into the database. They preferred to use the paper forms.
Photo Lab
Over 5000 black and white prints were produced in the photo lab. There were few problems with the photography equipment.
Miscellaneous
Five members of the technical staff practiced with the SEDCO emergency technical squad. Practice emergencies were held weekly.
The XEROX copiers were especially troublesome this leg. The ETs spent many hr troubleshooting and repairing problems. We are looking forward to the installation of new copiers scheduled for the end of next leg.
SEDCO thoroughly cleaned and painted the emergency backup battery lockers and put these batteries back on line. If time permits we will test the backup batteries to see how long they will last when they are put online.
LEG 162 LABORATORY STATISTICS
General Statistics:
Sites 9
Holes 30
Cored Interval (M) 7708.40
Core Recovered (M) 6730.74
Avg. Percent Recovered 87.30
Total Penetration (M) 8677.30
Time on Site (Days): 42.18
Number of Cores: 828
Number of Samples 26,727
232.83 m of core/day
Number of Samples Analyzed:
Chemistry Laboratory
Inorganic Carbon (CaCO3) 868
Total Carbon (NCHS) 690
Water Chemistry (the suite includes pH,
Alkalinity, Sulfate, Calcium, Magnesium,
Chlorinity, Potassium, Silica, Salinity) 208
Pyrolysis Evaluation (Rock-Eval and GHM) 47
Gas Samples 370
Extractions 0
X-Ray Laboratory
XRF: 0
XRD: 500
Magnetics Laboratory
Cryomagnetometer Runs: 4035
Cubes 9
Oriented Cores 233
Physical Properties Laboratory
Physical Properties Velocity 165
Velocity: 2098
Thermal Conductivity 496
Index Properties 3032
Resistivity: 0
Shear Strength: 1802
MST Runs 5020
Thin Sections 61
Underway Geophysics:
Bathymetry (nmi): 3913
Magnetics (nmi): 2001
Seismic Survey (nmi): 199
XBTs launched 22
Downhole Tools:
WSTP 0
ADARA 41
Additional:
Close-up Photos: 628
Whole Core Photographs: 4140
Rolls of Microphotographs 1
Color Transparencies 828
Black and White Prints 5026