Cork Harbor Field Trip

I'm taking a class called Oceans Past and Present and I absolutely love it. Today, we went out on a ship into Cork Harbor from the city to just beyond the river mouth into the open ocean! It was an absolutely glorious, blue-bird day. The object of the trip was to take sediment samples from the bottom at several different stations and analyze the sediments and the organisms we could see. We also took some water measurements (conductivity, temperature, depth, visibility) and we're going to use all of our data for a lab practical. This is yet another one of the best field trips I've ever been on. UCC is still amazing me!

Big barge on our way out into the harbor.

Blackrock Castle. That bubble on top is an observatory.



Some of our catch! We snagged a whole nest of brittle starfish in one of our grabs.


The 2 guys that helped with all the equipment.

A view from the window in the dining room.

I don't know exactly how this worked, but it's some sort of screw-like piece with lots of grease!

The 1st mate driving the ship. He was a funny guy. He said "We put Hogwarts to shame" when we were talking about mapping and weather forecasting techniques they use to pilot the ship.

Starfish from the dredge.

A velvet swimming crab from the dredge.