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Core product

Aboard the Knorr, from foreground, WHOI researchers Bill Curry and Jim Broda, along with Rolf Ambjornsen of the Norwegian marine services company Odim, help retrieve the first sediment ever collected by the WHOI-designed long-coring system on Sept. 5, 2007. Curry and Broda headed a WHOI team that designed and built the new corer, which at 150-feet was the longest piston-coring system in United States. Under Chief Scientist Lloyd Keigwin, Knorr currently is conducting paleo-ocean and paleo-climate studies of deep ocean sediments in the western North Atlantic, at the Laurentian Fan and locations between Newfoundland and the Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR). The mission’s goal is to link radiocarbon ventilation ages in the deep ocean with surface ocean conditions on different spatial and temporal scales. Cruise activities include multi-coring, gravity coring, long piston coring, hydrocasting, plankton towing, and seafloor mapping. The operation sites include the Tail of the Grand Bank, Corner Rise, the west flank of the MAR, and small plateaus and basins near the crest of the MAR. The depth range is 900 meters to about 5 kilometers. At the conclusion of the cruise, Knorr is scheduled to arrive at Woods Hole around Aug. 1.

(Photo by Alexander Dorsk, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)