RRS Discovery Cruise 219, 28 Nov-11 Dec 1995. Mass wasting off Portugal and the Canary Islands - investigation by giant piston coring

Cruise D219 was beset with problems - bad weather, the need to transfer seamen to port on two separate occasions for compassionate reasons, combined with the need for further trials of the coring system limited our coring attempts to 6 deployments of which only one produced a core. After only 12 days at sea considerable wear was detected on the ship's coring gantry making it unsafe for further work. The cruise was therefore terminated one week early. Nevertheless, we believe that the corer will work and produce good quality cores when the problems with the ship have been rectified.