A. McMurdo Sound Sediment Studies - fauna and flora.

The purpose is to collect further sediment samples from the floor of McMurdo Sound in various places so that sediment type and faunal content can be related to present day geography. The coast at New Harbour will also be examined for the sediment and the modern flora. This project continues work on sediments in McMurdo Sound, carried out by VUWAE 23 in 1978, and begins a Ph.D. programme that will concentrate on the Sound's benthic fauna, in particular foraminifera. Foraminifera are sensitive to a wide range of pollutants and "baseline" information on their present distribution may well be useful to help assess environmental impact in the future.

A sea ice-based seismic refraction programme will also be undertaken "off shore" at Butter Point in conjunction with the sediment sampling party. The gravity anomaly found during the MSSTS drilling programme last season (1979-80) will be investigated by seismic refraction and correlated with previous shipboard seismic profiling in the area.