Heading North!

Day one of the cruise has been busy, starting with an induction to the RV Pelagia and safety briefings, then loading up of the final pieces of kit, unpacking for labs and storing the PPE, we had lunch then finally set off for the Afen Slide, which is our first coring objective for this cruise, and we are hoping to take several cores at this site to constrain the age of the slide, and the nature of the glide plane that failed. 

We are keeping an eye on the weather, especially the low pressure system circling Iceland at the moment, as we are currently making our way through the North Sea, past the oil rigs and out towards the Shetlands. The Pelagia is cruising at a steady 9 knots heading north, you can follow us on Marine Traffic which has live updates of the ships position. The cruise team have been settling into life on board, we have internet access and fantastic facilities on board:

We have a number of social media streams running throughout the trip including a photo stream through Pinterest, and #ArcticSlides on twitter as several of the team will be tweeting updates as the cruise progresses.

Coming soon on the blog, more details on the science and the Arctic Landslide Tsunami Project, and some details on each of the slides we will be visiting over the coming four weeks.

Millie.

Pre-Cruise Planning Post

The cruise campaign plans are nearly complete, with meetings tomorrow to finalise coring locations to meet each of the campaign objectives. The map below shows the cores already in BOSCORF (British Ocean Sediment Core Research Facility) in red, key coring locations in green, and potential locations in yellow, though the campaign plan is subject to change with the weather and conditions at each location. These locations have been chosen to target the distal turbidite deposits from the large landslides on the Norwegian margin, many of which still have uncertain dates. The hope is that by heading to the high points within the deepest parts of the basin, we should find a thin turbidite deposit bounded by enough hemi-pelagite ("normal" marine mud) to date these turbidites accurately. One of the challenges this poses, is that deposition in this part of the basin can be as low as 5cm per thousand years, so in addition to looking for material to provide us with radiocarbon dates, we are also hoping to identify several tephra horizons within these cores. 

One of our other key objectives is to obtain several cores that will provide us with a high resolution climatic archive. The Nordic Seas are a key site for deep-water formation, the sinking of cold saline water, which drives the thermohaline circulation system, and as such, high resolution palaeoclimate records from these areas will allow us to refine our understanding of how these very large landslides fit with climate over the Holocene. The largest slide, the Storegga Slide, occurred during the last significant cold period, the 8.2 ka BP event (thousands of years before present), and it is unknown how, or even if, these two events are related to each other. 

The cruise team depart for Texel on the 2nd July, where we will meet the RV Pelagia and the remaining week will be spent gathering equipment, refining the coring plan and ensuring we have all the required background information we need. This includes swath bathymetry data from previous cruises to the region, courtesy of Julian Dowdeswell and Haflidi Haflidason, and TOBI data for the Traenadjupet Slide Scar from Julian. 

If you are interested in how these sediment cores are gathered, please see this short video detailing piston coring: 

Chat to the Team!

We are hoping to take some questions whilst we are at sea, so if you would like to ask us anything about the cruise, what we are doing whilst we are sea, life at sea or the research that will take place when we get back, send us a question using the CoverItLive app below. This will be dependent on the weather and the internet connection, but to send us a question, submit it at any time, you do not need to create an account, and we will answer it when the internet allows! Your question won't appear until we publish it, so please be patient, but we are looking forward to hearing from you!

Live Blog Arctic Landslide Tsunami Project