These photos include a science briefing in the computer lab, deploying or retrieving sediment and rock cores. Theses pipes are lowered down to the seafloor where they fill with ocean sediment or chips of rock. Once they are brought aboard the cores are cut-up into sections, photographed, described and sampled.
These sediments have been accumulating over several hundred thousands years and their composition records changes in the Earth’s climate and in the volcanic activity at the nearby mid-ocean ridge. For example, they contain particles deposited from hydrothermal vents (black smokers), which are active when there is magma in the Earth’s crust. Other photos show - retrieving a magnetometer (the orange torpedo shaped thing), the end of cruise bbq on deck and sailing back up the Columbia river to Astoria.
Photo Credits: David Ferguson (Harvard) & Richard Katz (Oxford)