Lake coring Options

[Robert_Oddo]

Yesterday was a great day for coring. There was little wind. It was sunny and around 40 degrees. So I spent the day with the group doing lake cores. Being out in the zodiac is great but you don't get to move around a lot so if you don't dress properly you get cold fast. It involves sinking a plexiglass tube down to the bottom of the lake and then using a device to pound the tube in and then extracting it using suction. It might sound easy but in a small boat rocking around it is not that easy. All kinds of things happen, the ropes tangle, the core doesn't go in straight, and the device loses suction. You do not want to mix up the layers. So we were able to get 9 good cores today. These are short cores, about 1 foot in length and will be brought back to the States for analysis. Other groups were again up on the glacier measuring ablation and measuring stream discharge.

Just a few words about the food we are eating up here. A number of times over the last weeks we have eaten reindeer for dinner. It is very much like beef and delicious. Last night we had a reindeer stroganoff which was great. Some members of the group had both whale and seal when we were in Longyearbyen and said it tasted really good. I don't know about that!!


Lauren and I cutting new plexigals cores


Mike and Brian getting core ready to deploy


sending tube to bottom to get core


Here's a good core!! If you look carefully you can see the layers.


spit core. if you look carefully you will see layers