Daily Report for IODP Expedition 311, Tuesday, October 25, 2005

LOCATION: Sites U1326 (CAS-03C)

SCIENCE UPDATE: We continued coring in Hole U1326D under less than favorable weather conditions, with ship heave continuously over 4 m, which has adversely affected core recovery (average = 63.5%). However, within the recovered cores we continue to see isolated IR anomalies associated with gas hydrate-bearing sand intervals, which in most cases are sampled for interstitial water analysis or shore-based microbial studies. We have also preserved several of the IR imaged anomalies from this hole in liquid nitrogen with the expectation that pieces or possible disseminated gas hydrate as been preserved in the core. As noted, if the IR temperature anomaly is relatively weak (~3-5° temperature reduction) the anomalies are sampled for either interstitial water samples or for microbiological samples. By midnight we had advanced Hole U1326D to a depth of 232.9 mbsf. The ship’s heave has been too high to attempt deployment of the DVTP, but we hope to deploy it at least two times before we reach the total depth of 300 mbsf.