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Please click on calendar dates
to see a daily log of the SHADRIL cruise.

April 2006

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April 6, 2005
Funded by the
National Science Foundation
Office of Polar Programs

Location: 58° 45.28 W, 62° 16.94 S

Temperature: 1C

100 Meters Under the Sea Floor

It has been a gray, misty day in the South Shetlands. The landforms appear through the mist, then as quickly vanish giving the Maxwell Bay an eerie and somehow surreal look.

The core samples keep coming aboard from places farther and farther away in geological history. Soon, the core from about 100 m below the ocean floor will surface. It will be about 10,000 years old, which corresponds to the beginning of the most recent geological age named Holocene.

Some of the geologists aboard have already started examining the samples from the bottom of the Maxwell Bay for the fossils of microorganisms called diatoms, which lived in these waters. Steve Bohaty, one of the paleontologists on board, has identified some of them that thrived in warmer temperatures, like Eucampia antarctica. Other diatoms were "happier" when in colder environments. As they died and were buried in the sediment they left a record of the climate changes that occurred in the years past. Studying these variations will help us determine the history of climate change in this region.

While in our lab the quest for diatom fossils continues, Captain Mike and the scientists in charge are studying the weather and ice maps thinking of our next site in the Weddell Sea.

Alex Injac


Three Brothers Hill (196m) on the King George Island


The seafloor of Maxwell Bay from multibeam swath bathymetry data obtained during this and previous cruises.

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