Ancillary Equipment

MARSSAM hosts a large variety of ancillary equipment that supports dredging and coring operations. These include components designed for facilitating coring on specific platforms (e.g. piston core buckets; railroad tracks) and processing recovered materials. Some of the larger items/requested gear include:

ItemNDescription
Multicore Extruder>6A variety of designs are available including the popular post style
Rock Saws4Two 14″ and two 10″ rock saws.
Core Splitter Saws3For splitting cores horizontally to create working and archive halves
USBL Beacon1For precise latitude and longitude locating of equipment
Niskin Bottle25L water sampling bottles that can be triggered during coring
Camera and Light Systems3We have two sets of GoPro and one Solo Arc camera system for imaging the seafloor prior and during sampling
Coring Sensors8A variety of accelerometers + pressure/depth + temperature sensors that are rated to 3 to 6km depth. These are often attached to JPC systems to monitor coring behavior to improve recovery and core quality
Hiab Cranes2Hiab 095 knuckle boom cranes modified for trigger core deployment
Winches2A DT3030 Electro-hydraulic multipurpose winch for load transfer of piston core weight and a DT MODEL 210EHLWR winch for spooling transducer cable for acoustic release
The splitter saw in action. C. Goldfinger 2022
The MARSSAM 14″ Norton Clipper being used to cut ferromanganese encrusted rocks on the RV Thompson. K. Konrad 2024

Multicore Extruders:

This basic extruder works by pushing the multicore sample tube over a stationary plunger. Steel stopper rods can be placed at 1/2 centimeter intervals to measure extruded intervals. Polycarbonate sample rings can also be used to measure extruded sediment quantities.

This multicore extruder moves a piston up through a stationary multicore tube. It moves 1 mm for each full revolution of the handle. The sample tube is mounted in place still inside the frame. It can also be quickly retracted or extended with a 3/8 drill extension.