April was a good month for the Cork-based researchers for field trips, and they were all going west!

Allihies I

In mid-April two of our Cork-based PhD students, Hannah Vogel and FX Bonin, were off to Southwest Ireland with Dr Richard Unitt for a couple of days of fieldwork, including sampling underground at Allihies, County Cork.

They travelled around the area, taking in the varied landscape, and trying to avoid the worst of the showers.

FX was collecting ore samples from both ‘bedded’ and vein-hosted copper deposits for paragenetic and isotopic analysis while Hannah was collecting the adjacent sediments and igneous rocks looking for the characteristic signs of Na-metasomatism.

Quite a few samples were collected, above ground as well as below.

West Cork peninsulas

François-Xavier Bonin and Pat Meere spent two days in West Cork later in April, scouting out copper sulphide samples for FX’s PhD project.

They visited Kilchrone and Gortavallig (Sheep’s Head Peninsula) and Dhurode (Mizen Peninsula) mines and two additional sites close to Lamb’s Head on the Iveragh Peninsula.

The sediment-hosted Cu on Lamb’s Head was particularly impressive. The weather was kind and the rain stayed away as it always does in Southwest Ireland! 😉

Allihies II

At the end of April, Mahasen Kulugammana and Pat Meere spent two days in the Allihies area collecting a suite of samples for Mahasen’s hyperspectral work. They managed to collect over 60 samples in ideal weather for fieldwork.

The samples will be making their way to the scanner at GSI in the coming weeks. The initial results on previous samples, which Mahasen presented at EGU, look very promising.

Two trips to West Cork without rain, that must be a record!!