Submitted by Anonymous on Thu, 04/24/2008 - 17:05
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Bering Sea Benthic Studies

Ms. Davenport,

I read your journal entry from April 12th and I was a little confused. Why exactly are murky water cores "bad" cores to analyze?

 -Jaspreet

Fri, 04/25/2008 - 08:29

Emily S. Davenport

Hi Jaspreet-
Well, to answer your question, the cores with murky water over them are bad because this means that they were disturbed somehow on their trip to the surface. All the sediment that makes up the top layer got shaken up and suspended in the water above the rest of the mud- sometimes the cores will get so badly disturbed that all of the sediment will be suspended in the water, as if it'd be shaken up. When we sample the sediment, we want to have our samples represent the benthic environment. If it is all shaken up, then we miss out on some important data because that disturbance affects the chemistry of the sediment and the distribution of the animals in the sediment- everything gets messed up!
Thanks for your question!