The first seamount we are going to explore is the Coral Seamount. The RRS James Cook will reach the site on Saturday. In the meantime, scientists and technicians on board are getting prepared, determining the number of samples they would like to get, the way they want to label them. And that is very important to simplify the work afterwards and make good use of this amazing amount of data this expedition is going to collect. A bar coding system will be tested.
A good number of meetings are taking place in the conference room of the ship as well. Maps of the seabed of the five different sites (Coral, Melville, Middle of What, Sapmer and Atlantis seamounts) are studied carefully to determine where we want to have the transects done, which parts of the seamount are the most promising.
