Concentration of Trace Metals in sediment collected from the Sabrina Coast Continental Slope - core C012-PC05

Each sediment sample (100-200mg) was ground using a pestle and mortar and digested following an initial oxidation step (1:1 mixture of H2O2 and HNO3 acid) and open vessel acid on a 150 degree C hotplate using 2:5:1 mixture of concentrated distilled HCl, HNO3 and Baseline Seastar HF acid.

After converting the digested sample to nitric acid, an additional oxidation step was performed with 1:1 mixture of concentrated distilled HNO3 and Baseline Seastar HClO4 acid. A 10% aliquot of the final digestion was sub-sampled for trace metal analyses. Trace metal concentrations were determined by external calibration using an ELEMENT 2 sector field ICP-MS from Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen, Germany) at Central Science Laboratory (University of Tasmania).