New deep sediment recovery

On 19 September 2022, I went for a new sediment recovery. The goal is to find micrometeorites in these sediments.

This time I decided (or I tried) to make it easier, and funnier. I went using my canoa, directly from the shore next to my home.


The place where I live is extremely windy and the sea is normally wavy with a lot of current. And I like it. But for recovering sediments, this is not helpful. I had to wait for a very calm day. On 19 September 2022, the weather was perfect for this purpose. No wind, no wave. Here, this only happens a few days each year.

The place where I decided to go is: 27.8658 N -15.3604 W.

This is 2.5 km away from an hostil shore, and 3.0 km away from the place where I can put my canoa into the water.

Here is a depth profile of the place.

The depth was about -75m so I could use a kind of enhanced fishing rod with reel, and a container instead of a hook.

This is the picture I took just before I started to recover sediments:


The water conditions can change very fast. There was no much time to take pictures. I took all security measures. I would have come back to the shore immediately if the weather would have shown any minimal change. The mobile phone did not loose connection so I could still make a phone call in case of an emergency. All in all, it was a great experience.

I managed to recover about 2 liters of sediments.

Here is a picture when I come back to the shore:


My first attempt to identify micrometeorites in the sediments, using about half of the sediments, was unsuccessful. But I will check the second half as soon as I can.

And of course I will go back to the sea on the next "window" of safe weather, to recover more sediments.

This is not only finding micrometerites. The path is probably as beautiful as the goal. It would be great to find micrometeorites this way. So I will persevere.













Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chloridric Acid for cleaning Calcium Carbonate deposits on micrometeorites candidates

Image
The particles I find in the sediments from the deep water sometimes look like "dirty". I wondered if this could be a layer of calcium carbonate. 1500 meters deep is quite above the Calcium Carbonate Compensation Depth (CCD). T he water is oversaturated in disolved calcium carbonate and this leads to a slow precipitation at the bottom. A possible solution would be cleaning the micrometeorites candidates with chloridric acid in low concentration. Fortunately the Calcium Carbonate reacts strongly with any acid and produces carbon  dioxide (gas) and dissolved calcium chloride. Here is a first attempt. I see part of the yellowish deposit is actually Calcium Carbonate but it is not only that. Between the strips of this possibly barred olivine micrometeorite, the yellowish/brownish color is apparently not Calcium Carbonate.
Read more

Group of terrestrial spherules

Image
NOT GOOD ! This is probably the worst you can find while looking for micrometeorites. I found it in the deep sea sediments I recovered. Many micrometeorites have a spherical or aerodynamical shape (if they melted when entering the atmosphere). Most of them also show one or more metal beads. So finding a particle with spherical shape and metal bead is good. It should be good. But micrometeorites are singles. They were alone in space, they should remain alone on the earth. Finding a group of 2 or more micrometeorites means these are just not micrometeorites. I found this group of spherules with metal beads which would have been good candidates if they were alone. Y have no idea which terrestrial phenomenon on the earth produced these nice imposters . But this is disappointing as this reduces the probability other glassy candidates with a metal bead  I found  are extraterrestrial. The need of a (complex) chemical analysis is now higher.
Read more