Last week, we reached 214 meters deep in the sediments of Lake Challa, and the unique record of East African equatorial mud is now complete! I had the opportunity to help out during the night shifts on the barge, and learned that it takes lots and lots of time waiting and staring at supermoons before bringing mud to the surface. During the second night on the barge, we had a few hours of high-speed core retrieving, slicing them up in 1.5 meter long pieces, and preparing them for transport to the lab. After we reached 185 meters on Friday morning, we gave way to the loggers from Germany. These loggers measured the coring hole for a myriad of parameters, and with this data it is easier to tie down all the pieces of core into a master sequence.
After we reached the milestone of successfully coring 214 consecutive meters of sediments (which is really a lot!), a few things needed to be done. After the scanning of the last cores in the lab, we cleared everything out very quickly, and packed the cores for transport to Minnesota, where they will be scanned, opened, and a master sequence will be compiled. We then returned to the lake for more water samples, and before we had to head back home we said our last goodbyes to the lovely Lake Challa. We hope to unravel its secrets in the years to come, starting with preliminary work on some core catchers.
And as the icing on the cake, check out this happy movie on what we did during the night and day shifts on the barge. DeepCHALLA, it has been a blast!
Loes
Loes