Ocean Drilling Program: Recent Highlights and Future Expeditions
Authors: Rabinowitz Philip D. 
Published: December 2007

During the past year, exploration of the deep ocean floor through scientific ocean drilling has yielded important results with respect to evolution of ocean crust and continental margins and paleoceanography. This paper describes the Ocean Drilling Program's (ODP's) scientific and technical achievements during its ninth year of field operations and discusses areas of future study.

Introduction

The ODP, an international basic research program of scientific ocean drilling, is the successor to the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). TexasA&M U. (TAMU), College Station, TX, is the science operator. ODP is funded by the U.S. Natl. Science Foundation with major contributions from 18 other countries. This international partnership is called the Joint Oceanographic Instns. for Deep Earth Sampling (JOIDES). To date, JOIDES Resolution (Fig. 1), ODP's scientific drillship, has retrieved sediment and hard rock samples from beneath the deep-sea floor at 308 sites (Table 1) in search of answers to important scientific problems designated by JOIDES. These sites in the Atlantic, eastern and western Pacific, and Indian oceans include high-latitude zones bordering east and west Antarctica, Baffin Bay, and the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Norwegian, Sulu, Celebes, Philip pine, Japan, and Coral seas. Thus far, 1,315 scientists from around the world have brought more than 510,000individual core samples from ODP cruises to their respective institutions for further study. JOIDES member countries include the U.S., France, Japan, the U.K., Canada, Australia, Germany, and members of the European Science Foundation: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Italy, Greece, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey.

JOIDES Resolution contains a seven-story, 1115 m2 laboratory stack with the state-of-the-art equipment necessary to analyze the physical and chemical properties of the collected rocks. The 50-member scientific and technical team, which remains aboard the vessel for expeditions that last about 2 months, has the following types of laboratories available for research: sedimentology, physical properties, paleomagnetic, chemistry, paleontology, petrology, thin-section, X-ray diffraction, X-ray fluorescence, and downhole measurement. In addition, photographic, electronics, and refrigerated-core storage facilities are available. During approach or departure from drill sites, the ship's geophysics laboratory records and processes digital single-channel seismics. JOIDES Resolution is also equipped with a research-oriented computer system designed to perform routine chemical, arithmetic, and graphics tasks. Two mainframe computers serve as a central processor and data library for 50microcomputers distributed throughout the laboratories.

Table 2 shows main characteristics of the dynamically positioned JOIDES Resolution.

Scientific Services

TAMU provides services for curation and distribution of cored material and associated databases and the production of ODP publications.

A series of formal and informal published scientific reports is issued during the period shortly before each cruise through approximately 3 years after the cruise. Our principal formal publication, Proceedings of the Ocean Drilling Program, is divided into two parts: Initial Reports, which contain descriptions of drilling sites, including core photographs, and is distributed12 to 15 months after the cruise; and Scientific Results, which contains peer reviewed specialty papers and is distributed 36 months after the cruise.

Three core repositories are managed by TAMU/ODP: one at Scripps Instn. of Oceanography, U. of California, San Diego, CA, houses the Indian and Pacific Ocean cores collected by the predecessor program, DSDP; one at Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia U., New York City, houses the DSDP and ODP Atlantic Ocean cores; and one at TAMU houses the ODP-collected Indian and Pacific Ocean cores. These repositories contain more than 160 km of core collected since 1968 by DSDP and ODP. A fourth core repository, to open in early 1994 in Bremen, Germany, will house future Atlantic Ocean cores. Scientists throughout the world may request samples from the ODP curator at TAMU, who maintains records of all proposed investigations to study the DSDP and ODP samples.

Data generated from cores together with geophysical data are entered into a computerized database consisting of several data files (i.e., geochemistry and physical properties). The database can be searched using almost any specified criteria contained in the data files. Searches that cross-reference several data-file documents are available to the scientific community.

Scientific and Technical

Objectives and Operations

During the first 9 years of ODP, we ad dressed many of the scientific and technical objectives defined at two conferences on scientific ocean drilling(Conferences on Scientific Ocean Drilling [COSOD's] 1 and 2). The scientific objectives defined at COSOD II include investigating changes in the global environment, mantle/crust inter actions, fluid circulation in the crust, the global geochemical budget, stress and deformation of the lithosphere, and evolutionary processes in oceanic communities. In addition, new technologies necessary to implement these scientific investigations, such as high-temperature drilling, drilling and coring in difficult formations(fractured basalts, unconsolidated sands, chert, etc.), and downhole measurements, were addressed.

Previous reports summarized the scientific objectives for Legs 100 through146. Below we summarize results from the informal preliminary reports published at ODP for Cruises 147 through 152, completed during our ninth year of field operations, and describe future cruises in the Atlantic Ocean. Fig. 2 gives generalized ODP site locations.

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