Yesterday at 4:03 PM the last two containers of drilling equipment were loaded onto a truck bound for port, and our physical activities here in the field came to an end. All that's left is a tangle of paperwork to wrap things up here and then ship ~5 tons of sediment core to the US. We'll get it done; I just hope there aren't too many headaches along the way...
Ever wondered what spending 24 hours on the drilling barge logging the borehole feels like? This video might help answer that.
We send logging tools down at least one drilled hole at each site to log various physical properties of the sediment in situ. This helps us to correlate our sediment cores to "true depth", and gives us valuable information about the sedimentology of the sites before we ever open a core. This video, thanks to Jan-Thorsten Blanke, will give you an idea of how that work is done.
The interminable wait for rig parts continues. To keep things lively, here is the next installment in our DrillCam miniseries: Recovering a Core.
A special thanks goes to Skyler Davis, who attached his GoPro to his hard hat to film these videos.
It's been nine days since we last drilled a core, and will be at least five more until we can get new pumps for the rig and start coring again. It's a hard pill to swallow that after 4 years of careful planning, the project has come together beautifully, yet the most critical piece of drilling equipment is defective.
This is not to say we haven't made progress- the Geomicrobiology team has finished processing our first core, and has an excellent set of samples with which to understand biogeochemical processes in metal-rich sediment. And as you see from previous posts, our outreach efforts are really making an impact in the local community. Meanwhile, due to the lull, much of the science team is taking the opportunity to visit nearby Tana Toraja to see some of the region's rich cultural heritage, while Tia, Ryan, and I stay here to push things along as best we can.
To take us to happier times, here is a video from Towuti Drilling Project's world famous DrillCam. This clip takes us back to the project's salad days when we had a working drill. This video shows the process of deploying a hydraulic piston corer (HPC), the principal piece of equipment we use for coring soft lake sediments. Next up: core recovery.
Day 4 of our wait begins. Our replacement parts show up in 6 hours and 25 minutes, so hopefully we'll be back in operation tonight. We're on pins and needles. But things haven't been completely been completely boring. We had a big storm a couple nights ago on Towuti that tossed our emergency boat around. Even crazier, the barge got hit with a beetle infestation. The beetles have mostly left, but it was a crazy scene for a couple of days.
Day three of our wait for rig parts is halfway through. The days are getting long, and we're trying to keep our regular schedule of 12-hour rotations so that we can jump straight into drilling when the rig is fixed (hopefully tomorrow). This usually means sunrises on the lake, which are a beautiful sight:
Our standby continues while waiting for new parts for the rig. Yesterday the grad students completed our surface sediment sampling program that will let us characterize spatial variations in the chemical and mineralogical composition of modern sediments in Towuti- important to understanding variations in the past. We expect the spare parts to arrive tomorrow, so we are prepping everyone to get back on 12-hour shifts.
In the meantime, here is a video about the core processing we do once the cores come off the barge, shot a few days ago while our system was working.
Yesterday we bottomed out in hole 1B at ~160 m in what looks like bedrock. This is shallower than we expected, so we are planning another hole to see if we can get a thicker sediment section corresponding to the early history of Lake Towuti.
Unfortunately, though, the project has encountered its first major delay. the persistent issues with the drilling rig hydraulics developed into a major problem, and we are currently unable to do any drilling at all. An engineer from the rig manufacturer is coming today to see if we can identify and hopefully fix the problem. In the meantime, we are doing borehole logging of 1B.
Here is a video of our daily routine and barge setup. "Drilling from Above"... it sure beats drilling from below.
It's already officially weekend here in Indonesia, but our team is busy getting ready for the actual scientific drilling operation! Here's a cheeky teaser trailer for all of you to enjoy. Do watch out for exciting updates from us over the weekend!
And the barge launches!!! But very slowly. Almost as slow as this video upload.
