Maxicorer

The maxicorer was developed at the TU Berlin (Gerber et al, 1996). It was used during the SO106 cruise to recover large volumes of undisturbed sediment samples from the seafloor to investigate soil mechanics-related parameters, such as sediment density, water content, shear strength and penetration force. The maxicorer was deployed successfully 15 times during the course of SO106 and provided – combining the advantages of both the box corer and the multicorer – sampling material for (close to) in-situ soil mechanical investigations. In addition to that, some biological and geochemical studies could also be performed, because the maxicorer samples were recovered with in-situ deep-sea water at a temperature of 3-4° C and the surface and the semi-liquid top layer unaffected by the sampling procedure (Grupe et al, 2001).

Gerber, H.W., Oebius, H.U., Grupe, B., (1996): Maxicorer - a device for taking undisturbed samples of sediment including the benthic boundary layer; Sea Technology 37, 66–69.

Grupe, B., H. J. Becker and H. U. Oebius (2001): Geotechnical and sedimentological investigations of deep-sea sediments from a manganese nodule field of the Peru Basin. Deep-Sea Res. II, 48, 3593 – 3608.