Skip navigation

IODP Expedition 330 Louisville Seamount Trail

Reports

Daily Report 26 -- Thursday 06 January 2011 -- Let's Move Over
To re-enter Hole U1373A we had to deploy a free-fall funnel (FFF) into the hard ground of the seamount top. Our hope was that the erosive action of the drill pipe rotating had worn out the top of the hole sufficiently enough that the FFF would go in. If not, and it would tip over, we always could resort to trying to find the hole without any aid of the FFF but simply to try and aim for it. An amazing idea, but they had it done before in hard ground so definitely two shots worth trying. When the...
267
Daily Report 24 -- Tuesday 04 January 2011 -- Site U1373 on 28.6°S Guyot
After the abrupt ending of the first drill site, we weren't in for a guyot covered by boulders and a surface of outcropping lava flows, but that is exactly what we encountered when lowering the VIT camera at Site U1373. The co-chiefs were now huddling over a small black-and-white monitor in the dynamical positioning (DP) room to use this vibration-isolated television camera to find ourselves a spot with a decent soft sediment cover. Using GPS and its abundant thrusters, the JOIDES Resolution...
266
Daily Report 21 -- Saturday 01 January 2011 -- 2011 On the South Pacific
After leaving Site U1372 so abruptly we were now on our way to Site U1373 which is alternate Site LOUI-6A on Guyot 28.6°S. This seamount lies not too far away from the first site and we estimate this seamount got formed around 73 million years ago, that is in the Cretaceous. This also meant we were in transit between sites while crossing into the New Year of 2011. Evidently we were one of the first people in the world to do so, as this new Louisville seamount is located very close to the date...
263
Daily Report 19 -- Thursday 30 December 2010 -- What About Getting Stuck on a Seamount?
All good things end - at least a pessimist would argue so. Generally I would disagree, but things were turning worse with every new core we were getting on deck. The first bad signs came when the recovery started going from 19% to 115% and vice versa. And it kept fluctuating. We quickly noticed that every time we had poor recovery, we also had a few basaltic clasts or pebbles "jamming" the core catcher. As soon as a few of these pebbles decided to block the core catcher they evidently didn't...
262
Daily Report 16 -- Monday 27 December 2010 -- Reaching Volcanic Basement at Site U1372
After five days of drilling at Site U1372 we have recovered many wonderful cores with many wonderful rocks of many kinds. In fact the cores already have provided us with lots of the rocks and minerals we require for our onshore research programs, which is a very good beginning of our expedition! We cored into a colorful volcaniclastic sediment of carbonate-cemented volcanic breccia. Some of the breccias have boulders in them that in themselves are very well-preserved, containing for example...
257
Daily Report 14 -- Saturday 25 December 2010 -- Christmas Onboard the JOIDES Resolution
We are spending this year's Christmas together with 120 people on the JOIDES Resolution. Although all our families are far away at home and we are longing to be in their company, we have been making the best of this special holiday. In fact, a great effort was made by many on onboard the JOIDES Resolution to make this a memorable day and indeed it was! A special committee was assembled who organized all fesitivities, and the catering staff have been tremendously busy to put together a wonderful...
215
Daily Report 11 -- Wednesday 22 December 2010 -- Drilling Into the Volcanic Basement of 26.5° Guyot
Today we reached a milestone with the first-ever drilling of a Louisville seamount! It took more than seven years of preparation to get to this point, and everybody onboard the JOIDES Resolution is completely psyched by the idea it finally starts now. In these preceding years we have written and rewritten many versions of our IODP proposal, we have filed many reports to many IODP panels, we have carried out a six week site survery on the R/V Roger Revelle in 2006, and over the last year we have...
207
Daily Report 9 -- Monday 20 December 2010 -- Arriving at Site U1372 (LOUI-1C) at 26.5°S Guyot
Today the JOIDES Resolution reached the first drill site for Expedition 330 to the Louisville seamount trail. As by rule we continued counting drill sites from where the previous expedition to the "South Pacific Gyre" left if off. This means that our first drill site automatically gets assigned the number U1372. In other words, we are drilling the 1372nd site since the onset of ocean drilling in the 1960's, when the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) was stilled named the Deep Sea...
206
Daily Report 1 -- Sunday 12 December 2010 -- Port Call Expedition 330 in Auckland, New Zealand
For me Expedition 330 started in Corvallis (Oregon) on December 10 with 20 hours worth of flights from Portland to Los Angeles to Sydney with a final destination in Auckland, New Zealand. Of course I crossed the date line and so on my way I lost one extra day, arriving late in the afternoon on December 12. I was pretty much exhausted. The weather was fair and already early in the morning of that same day the JOIDES Resolution had arrived in Wynard Wharf at 06:36, officially marking the end of...
204