expedition 378 set out to recover the sediment sequences from a location south of new zealand iodp site u1553 which is critical to scientists understanding of high-latitude environmental conditions ocean circulation and wind patterns during a time in recent earth history characterized by the evolution of climate from extreme warmth into a climate state that supported the growth of ice sheets on antarctica thomas said iodp and texas a&m have a long history: since 1985 texas a&m has served as the host of joides resolution science operations and the joides resolution science operator (jrso) is based in the texas a&m college of geosciences two of the three iodp ocean sediment core repositories are housed at texas a&m and at the marum at the university of bremen iodp is funded by the national science foundation and other participating countries conducting critically needed science even with a shortened itinerary about 10 days before the expedition began thomas and röhl learned from iodp and jrso leadership that an inspection of the joides resolutions derrick revealed that it could not drill in waters deeper than 2 kilometers eliminating four of the five drill sites originally planned for expedition 378 and therefore shortening the overall expedition science conducted at sea is an inherently risky operation and successful data collection truly relies on an alignment of stars favorable weather and sea state properly functioning sampling equipment and a safely functioning research vessel thomas wrote at the time safety is paramount all sea-going scientists have their tale of misaligned stars thomas and röhl regrouped and worked with jrso director dr brad clement to quickly adjust the expeditions plans for only drilling at one site instead of five: site u1553 located south of new zealand the only way forward was positive thomas said everyone onboard the ship is giving up time everyone is enduring some sacrifice so it really fell on us to make sure that not only was the experience as positive and formative as possible but that everyone came away with really impactful science decades before this voyage cores from the same location as site u1553 had been recovered by iodps predecessor the deep see drilling project (dsdp) aboard the glomar challenger drillship in 1973 but the modern state-of-the art drilling and laboratory equipment on the joides resolution and iodps scientific advances in drilling and analyzing sediments made a revisit to the site a very strategic endeavor in 2020 we return to dsdp site 277 we give it a new name a couple new holes and the best scientific analysis we can muster wrote expedition 378 outreach officer lindy newman during the voyage in 2020 we call it iodp site u1553 because even after all our scientific advancements the earth still has secrets to reveal how to lead a floating never-stopping multilingual science station what is it like to co-lead a science team of experts from all over the world sedimentologists micropaleontologists petrologists chemists paleomagnetists downhole logging specialists and equipment technicians all constantly working in 12-hour shifts on a tight schedule in the middle of the ocean while also coordinating with a crew of professional drill operators serving as co-chief was a stressful blast thomas said even before sailing the science that they proposed for the expedition required a tremendous amount of planning she said then we worked with the program management offices in our various iodp member consortia and nations to select the ideal group of scientists to help us achieve these scientific objectives aboard the joides resolution a co-chief scientists day is very busy thomas led the day shift which was noon to midnight and röhl led the night shift from midnight to noon once we reach the drill site the co-chiefs job is to really help guide decision making about drilling she explained its working with the drillers and the operations team to best use the time that we have available for drilling operations and so in our case we had to balance getting redundant but critical replication of different portions of the sediment sequence in the five separate holes drilled at site u1553