Day 5

Thursday 4th September, 2014

After 4 days of continuous 24-hour seafloor surveying, we have got into the daily routine of work and life on the OSG Explora. The expertise and synergy of the different international people on board is fascinating and play an important role for the success of this mission. This expedition is funded by the Marie Curie Actions and is a collaboration between the following institutions:

• University of Malta (UoM)

• Istituto Nazionale di Oceanografia e di Geofisica, Italy (OGS),

• National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, New Zealand (NIWA),

• National Oceanography Centre, UK (NOC), and

• University College Dublin, Ireland (UCD

Here follows a brief description of the different roles of key people representing the institutions above:

Aaron (UoM) is the brains behind this project, and the Chief Scientist of the mission. More on Aaron in an upcoming post. 

Aaron: Happy with his latest core catch.

Isabella, Daniela, and Andrea work for OGS. Their role is to ensure they collect the data of the study area. They monitor the performance of all the instruments (multibeam, GPS, and echo sounder), and give route instructions directly to the bridge.

Isabella, Daniela & Andrea: Planning the next route for the OSG Explora

Riccardo is engineer at OGS and ships/operational manager on board. He handles the deployment and recovery of instruments, such as the gravity coring and SVP (Sound Velocity Profile), from the sea.

Ricardo: Monitoring the deployment of a core down to the seafloor

Joshu is from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research. His main role on board is that of preparing and retrieving sediment cores.

Joshu: working on one of the retrieved cores. 

Tim is a researcher at the NOC. Tim spends a lot of time in his cabin, which he conveniently turned into an office. His role is that of processing the multibeam data by correcting attitude and ship movements errors, eliminating echo outliers, and producing unique and beautiful maps of the seafloor. These maps show plains, slopes, canyons and what the seafloor is made of. 

Tim: Processing the multibeam data into detailed, colourful mops.

Veerle and Claudio also come from the NOC. Veerle heads the outreach program for CUMECS-2, while Claudio is in charge of seismic reflection data.

Veerle: measuring the length of our first core.

Claudio: Cleaning a piece of rock collected from one of the cores.

Matthew and Antoniette have joined the scientific crew to get a hands-on experience with marine geophysics.

Matthew under the watchful eye of Veerle

Antoniette: During one of today's three coring operations 

Julie is a Geologist and works as a Senior Scientific Officer in the Continental Shelf Department of the Ministry for Transport and Infrastructure in the Government of Malta.

Julie Auerbach, a geologist on board

Aggeliki from the University College Dublin, unfortunately could not participate in this expedition. She will be responsible for the analysis and study of the cores obtained from this voyage. UCD will be archiving the cores.

One of the great things about being part of this expedition is the element of strong communication and team work between all the scientific crew. Whilst the science is taken seriously, we find some time to chat on our personal lives, take photos, videos, and write this blog :)