Day 4 Diver's log

AM dive:
Deepworkers: Mike Gernhardt, Darlene Lim
CapCom: Allyson Brady

• Explored deepest regions of lake near Macri Ridge at the centre of Pavilion Lake.
• Successfully

PM dive:
Deepworkers: Greg Slater, Bekah Shephard
CapCom: Bernard Laval

• Explored Willow Point/western shore of Central Basin where massive microbialite specimens previously indicated by sonar were observed. took sample from deep trench microbilate growth

DeepWorker Report - Greg Slater:
This afternoon Bekah and I followed up Darlene and Mike’s exploration of the deep mounds at the center of the lake. We were all really excited by the reports brought back my Darlene and Mike about the unusual morphologies, colours and distributions of the microbialites at these deep locations. And we were all particularly excited to see our first sample retrieved from this location by Darlene. Sampling of these deep mounds is one of our primary goals for this research.

This successful dive set expectations high for Bekah and myself. And for me, these expectations were fulfilled. This was the first dive I have had that went according to the dive plan. I covered the 30 m and 15 m contours along the western wall of the central basin. My deeper contour that was flown between 90 and 100 feet, ran along the bottom of the primary microbialite structures. This confirmed that the hard returns on sonar were microbialites and that they ended at this depth. On the way back, I flew over what appeared to be the upper contact of the structures. There was an almost continuous ridge of structure all the way down the side of the lake. It was amazing to see the extent of this ridge along the side of the lake. Both the structures at depth and this ridge were very similar to what is observed at our science transect at Willow Point. This was great to see as it demonstrated that this science transect is representative of this entire shore of the lake. So, rather than coming from a unique site, our research here is really representative of the entire shore. The ability to cover such a large distance ( 2 km of contour) with the Deepworker was invaluable in confirming this. Not only was the science exciting, but at several points Bekah and I came close enough together to film each other working. I can’t wait to see the video of this.