The Charles Lab is out to sea! We are having a great time out on the Indian Ocean. Our goal is to retrieve fossil coral that is between 18,000 and 10,000 years old. Specifically, we want to find coral that grew in the surface ocean from the last glacial maximum up to the beginning of the current warm period.

Our first order of business was to sail out of India on a southwest course for the outer Seychelles bank. The area we were crossing has very interesting marine chemistry (very productive waters with denitrification at depth near India), so on the way to the Seychelles, we acquired water samples from 1000m to the surface.

After crossing the equator (the first time for many of us--you may know what that means) and arriving on the outer Seychelles bank, we surveyed the outer Seychelles Bank for fossil coral.

Once we found some good locations for fossil coral, we dropped a dredge off the back of the ship and started bringing the fossil coral on-board. There were some long nights for all of us, but it's work we love to do, so it wasn't too bad.

Before the cruise ended, we wanted to retrieve a sediment core from this region. The records of sediment cores taken all over the world showed that none have ever been retrieved from this area. After scanning several possible coring locations using our multi-beam bottom profiler (allows us to "see" the seafloor), we brought a small gravity core of sediment back to the ship and headed home.

Some more photos from this cruise:

Danny

Lydia

Patrick

Chris

All the science party:

L to R: Patrick Rafter, Chris Charles, Liz Johnstone, Lydia Roach, Daniel Richter, and Daniel Brothers