Submitted by Anonymous on Fri, 04/25/2008 - 16:27
Forums
Bering Sea Benthic Studies

Hello,

First off, congratulations on what your doing. I have a question regarding the cores. What do you think is the exact reason the cores have not been as good as you would like?

Thanks, Aaron

Hartford High School

Mon, 04/28/2008 - 09:03

Emily S. Davenport

Hi Aaron-
Well, the cores haven't been very good at some stations for a few reasons, but we can't always pinpoint the exact reason. When there are a lot of waves and wind, it causes the ship to drift really quickly, and this can end up dragging the multicorer across the bottom, which could cause us to get bad cores. Also, if the waves are large, the multicorer can bounce off the bottom instead of settling nicely into the sediment. The corer has also hit the ship before, which shakes up all that mud in the tubes, or causes the mud to fall out. Finally, if the sediment is really stiff mud or sand, the multicorer often doesn't go very far into the sediment, or the sediment doesn't always stay inside the tubes. These are just a few of the reasons why we don't get good cores- and sometimes we don't know what the sediment will be like until we core it- so it's often a game of chance as to whether or not we get our cores! This can be disappointing, but it's all part of research!
Thanks for your question!