RRS Discovery Cruise 225, 24 Feb-07 Mar 1997. Studies of mass wasting in the Agadir Basin and sediment transport in the Gulf of Cadiz - incorporating trials of the giant piston corer

This was the second cruise using the new SOC giant piston corer. The objectives were to complete the testing of the giant piston corer which was begun on cruise D219 in November/December, 1995 and to collect giant piston cores from the Agadir Basin, Gulf of Cadiz and Portuguese margin. We showed that the original problems with the ship's gantry have been overcome and that the ship is now capable of handling the loads experienced during deployment and especially pullout. A large number of relatively minor problems were experienced during the cruise with the design and configuration of the corer. We worked through these systematically until cores were being obtained on a regular basis. A total of 9 cores were obtained from 14 coring attempts. The longest core was 15.97 m long. The quality of cores recovered was excellent