Thursday 27th January
Today's contributor: Jon Copley
We completed our work at Hook Ridge today. This morning we deployed a box corer, which collects more sediment than the megacorer, to get a better idea of what lives here. And in the afternoon, we towed an Agassiz trawl (which takes its name from 19th century deep-sea biologist Alexander Agassiz) to collect some of the animals that live away from the vent site. All biology hands were on deck to sieve the mud from the trawl afterwards: an operation involving a shovel, a fire hose, sieves and buckets, and eagle-eyed biologists poised with forceps for picking out specimens.
The box core returns
Make-and-mend while waiting for the Agassiz trawl
In the evening, we set course for our next target, Orca Crater. But on arrival, around midnight, we encountered an iceberg exactly where we needed to deploy the CTD probe. We'll try again here during our return journey along the Strait, so for now we are heading on to another undersea volcanic outcrop, called Three Sisters.
King George Island at sunset
An occasional complication for our plans