A picture is worth a thousand words (or so they say). Below are a number of sediment geochemistry images, some of which I found while preparing Geochemistry of Marine Sediments (others I’ve found since the book was published). In retrospect I wish I had included them in the book – I guess that will have to wait for the second edition (if there ever is one)
The author collecting a short sediment core from shallow water sediments on the Bahamas Bank.
Benthic ecology meets sediment geochemistry. The USC benthic lander on deck in Monterey Bay (also see below) with a large starfish attempting to engulf the oxygen electrode in the lid of the one of the chambers. See section 12.1 of the book for a discussion of the use of benthic landers to determine sediment-water exchange fluxes.
The USC lander hard-at-work in Catalina Basin (southern California Borderland), as photographed from the research submersible Alvin.
In situ photograph of a Mn nodule field in the southwest Pacific Ocean at a water depth of ~5,000 m. The scale of this photo is roughly 1.5 m x 3 m. See section 13.3 of the book for a discussion of Mn nodules. Photo courtesy of I.C. Wright and can originally be found in New Zealand J. Geol. Geophys., 2005, vol. 48: 27-41
Sediment cores collected with a multi-corer from a site in the eastern tropical Pacific. Note the transition about halfway down the core from a brown, oxidized layer surface layer to (reduced ?) greenish-gray clay below (see sections 7.3.3.2 and 13.4 of the book). Photo credit: David M. Anderson, NOAA Paleoclimatology Program.
Collecting a deep-sea sediment core circa 1930-40 with a Varney-Redwine deep sea corer (image from the SIO Archives)
A cross section of a manganese nodule (section 13.3), illustrating the Fe/Mn banding found in many nodules (image from the National Institute of Oceanography of India).
Early sediment sampling aboard the HMS Challenger (1872-76)
Flume studies illustrating the upwelling of red pore fluid (blue arrow) and intrusion of tracer from the water column (red arrow) caused by boundary flow-topography interactions in permeable sands (see section 12.3 of the book). Photo courtesy of Marcus Huettel, Florida State Univ. and can be originally found in Limnol. Oceanogr., 1996, 41: 309-3
Seasonal redox zonation in Cape Lookout Bight sediments. These winter sediments show a several cm “brown” oxidized layer at the sediment surface, below which the sediments are anoxic and sulfidic (see section 14.3 of the book).
The coccolithophore Emiliania huxlyei covered by calcium carbonate platelets (or coccoliths). An individual coccolith platelet is shown below (see sections 2.2 and 13.5). Source: Toby Tyrell, SOC.
A multi-core we collected in 2019 in the center of Santa Barbara Basin
Photograph and X-radiograph of a multi-core from Santa Barbara Basin showing laminated sediments from the center of the basin (see the Appendix of the book for further details about Santa Barbara Basin). Photos courtesy of Lowell Stott, USC.