Marine sediment core samples from Amundsen Sea expedition (ANA08B) in 2018

During the ANA08B western Antarctic expedition, sediment coring was performed with a box corer consisting of a headstand weighing ca. 350 kg attached to the top of a rectangular steel tube (30×40×60 cm) at 4 stations. The coring tool was deployed from the A frame in the stern using the Deep Sea Traction (DST) winch with spectra rope. Once on deck the top centimeter of sediments captured in the steel tube was skimmed for palynological and organic geochemical determinations. The sediment in the box core was subsampled into a cylindrical push core and the rest of the material left in the box was examined for megafauna presence and then discarded.
A sediment coring program was conducted during the ANA08B cruise to meet several scientific objectives: i) to obtain integrated sedimentary records of fossilized micro-flora to provide spatio-temporal distributions of planktonic population of the Amundsen Sea area, and ii) to attain data on past changes in chemical compositions of seafloor sediments assessing natural instabilities in biogeochemical processes in this region. Main purpose of this sediment coring processes is to retrieve new and undisturbed sediments from the selected research target areas using a box coring device.