Day 12: Finally, success!
By Olivia Belshaw
Saturday the 17th August saw the research team deploy 5 unsuccessful dredges on the Lexington Seamount – we collected multiple sediment samples (full of foraminifera), several samples of live and deceased deep sea coral but no rocks.
Finally, on the morning of Sunday 18th August – success! Four black rock samples collected in the morning dredge. The morning shift were excited to be back studying rocks, rather than sifting kilograms of sediment.
Left – Dr Karin Orth (University of Tasmania) and Post-Doc researcher Ben Mather (University of Sydney) discuss naming a rock sample.
Top right – a sample of “Altered Trachyte”.
Bottom right – Student researcher, Dushyendra Asaithamby, identifies a rock specimen.
Top – Student researcher, Chris Dagger, looks at a rock sample under the digital microscope.
Bottom left – Student researchers, Chantelle Ridley (University of Tasmania) and Saskia Rutter (Monash University) sieve a sediment sample to collect small samples such as coral pieces and pumice.
Bottom Right – A sample of “Heavily altered polymictic feldspar phyric clast bearing breccia”.