We got to do the coring at the end of the field trip this year. The previous few years, we had done it early on. I quite like doing it last. And we always do it at the same time as the geophysics. We were scheduled to pick up the students on the Friday quite late: 11 o’clock, and then be out in the field until quite late to have all students do both activities.
On Thursday I bumped into Dei and Katrien, who run the geophysical exercise. Since we have moved the field location to Anglesey, they are working with electrical resistance. The problem with that is that it is weather-dependent. If you soak everything in rainwater, everything has the electrical resistivity of rainwater! And they had looked at the weather forecast; on the Friday afternoon, everything really would get soaked in rainwater. What to do?
It wouldn't be raining in the morning, but they figured they couldn't fit all the students in in that short time. So their suggestion was: just don't do the geophysics, and just all team up so all students could do the coring before the rain would hit. That sounded fine to me. It would mean an earlier start, but earlier than 11 o'clock is perfectly acceptable. We barged into Jaco's office to suggest the change, and he was fine with it as well. We would pick up the students at 8:30. And then all go coring, and get it done by noon.
With the entire cohort of students coring at the same time, we would need a bit more equipment, but Dei and Katrien could magic something out of their obscure lab. Success!
The next morning the forecast had changed a bit; it would now start raining at about 10. Oh dear! We had better get our skates on. We drove to the field, dragged all our materials to the field site, and had a go at it. We had augers and gouges. Gouges are difficult to use in sand, but they provide a beautiful continuous record. Augers are totally fine in sand but provide a much messier record. We tried both. And we had a spade too; two students just dug a trench. You can’t get very deep that way, but the view on the sediments is unsurpassed.
Throwing the kitchen sink at it like that made things a bit chaotic, but I think in the end, we got what we came for. All students had a core log, and I had taken samples from the trench. Jaco took some more from a gouge. And then we felt droplets. Time to scarper!
I never even took a picture; that’s how busy it all felt. But that’s ok! And it was an abrupt end of the field trip, but so be it. Soon we will get to mark the students’ field notebooks, and then we will get an additional source of information on how well it all went!
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