CDH?

Long coring was abandoned in the US in the mid-1980s, but the WHOI Long Core system that we are using on this cruise – which took 5 years to develop and was tested for the first time in 2007 – brings it back.

This new system is capable of collecting cores up to 45 meters (150 feet) long. This is almost twice as long as the previously possible on an UNOLS vessel. You can read about the Long Core system (how it works, how the 287’ Knorr was retrofitted to be able to handle a system that can pull up cores that weight up to 30,000 pounds, etc.) and even watch a video of the coring operation at WHOI’s Long Core website (http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=19095).

One of the mysteries of the long core – at least to the uninitiated – is its name. You may have noticed that there are a lot of abbreviations around here: GGC (giant gravity core), POD (plan of the day), BC (box core), UNOLS (University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System), WHOI (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), and many more. Most of the abbreviations are easy to understand. But, all of the long cores are labeled CDH. What's up with that?

Jim Broda, who has worked designing and engineering corers at WHOI since 1980 and was one of the principles in the project that resulted in the WHOI Long Core, told us that CDH stands for Charles David Hollister.

Charles David Hollister was a well-known marine geologist. While at WHOI in the 1970s, Hollister (yes, think Santa Barbara county’s Hollister Ranch) started the development of a giant piston coring system. In the 1970s he collected a 100-foot-long core that was dubbed the “Super Straw." That core documented what was, at the time, the longest continuous record of ocean history.

The cores that are recovered using the new WHOI Long Core system are labeled in Hollister’s honor.