The past couple of weeks have seen important work taking place on the Belgian component of the LOTE project. Last week saw the opening of the pilot cores, which was a great success and will inform our interpretation of the geophysics and future sampling. In conjunction with partners at the University of Ghent, range finder dating and Palaeoenvironmental samples were recently acquired from a selected group of the pilot cores. These will hopefully help with our understanding of the ages of some of the sediments, and hopefully yield information on the environments and flora on the Belgian Continental Shelf during the Last Ice Age. We look forward to the results !