About this blog

Chapter 1:  About this blog

     As the title of the blog suggests this is a story of how deep ocean geo-research has been conducted since about the mid-1950s, with a reference or two from prior history, as told by one person who was there to witness a certain critical portion of that work since my career in that field began in 1980.  This is a story.  Full of facts, observations and personal experiences, but a story nonetheless.  A good one, I hope.   

    I have had the amazing good fortune to be employed and involved in the actual hands on conduct of that global subsea research and can relate some stories, details, anecdotes and opinions that may be of interest.  (See the “About Me” section).  I would have liked to call this blog “Looking under the hood of planet earth” but that title has been taken for a nice article written by Robt. O. Frederick, Drilling magazine, May 1984.

    So what research am I talking about?  And why should anybody, any tax-paying layman, care about so-called geo-research under the deep oceans?  Some of the specific answers to those questions will provide the grist for various chapter submissions as I go along.  Near the bottom of this introduction is the skeleton onto which I will try to add some flesh over time. 

    The organizational structure of deep ocean research is a complex international puzzle of individuals and sub-groups.  The two largest pieces of the puzzle, historically, are the now-defunct Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and the ongoing Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) – I was an employee of each.  Both of those organizations were/are funded, mostly, through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), but a big share of long term funding and science support has come from international partners (the NSF-equivalents of Great Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and so on and so on - there have been more than twenty countries and consortiums).  The players shift and tend to be in constant flux depending on the states of national and global economies, as well as individual political leaders’ belief in the relative importance of earth science research.


French airmail stamp commemorating ODP



    Relative to my blog I should take a moment here to comment on why I think any reader out there might care enough to read this.  Several reasons, really.  One, are my experiences sharing this information with others. During the years since 1980 I have traveled the world a fair amount to get to and from both actual research locations, and also to attend the inevitable array of scientific and technical symposiums and meetings.  It is inherent in the structure of the research efforts that the locations of interest are worldwide.  So, actual offshore research sites can be found at just about any location covered by deep water anywhere in the world (this includes not only the seven seas, but also some pretty interesting deep lakes -- more about that lake aspect later).  And since the cast of characters is global by definition, the researchers and other participants may be home-based literally anywhere in the world.  Hence, when an expedition is planned there is no home port for the drillship, when a meeting or symposium is arranged there is no central, cost-effective location to hold it – somebody, actually a lot of participants, will have to come from a long distance away.  So, this leads to a lot of global travel for all of us.  (I have colleagues who hold lifetime platinum-whatever frequent flyer cards on multiple major airlines and wonder why the super-diamond category has not been opened up for them.)  A lot of global travel leads to making the acquaintance frequently with seat mates on commercial flights.  It seems, for me, about three out of four of those random airliner seat mates would ask the pro forma, where are you going – what do you do questions and before we knew it we had passed three or four hours with me doing almost all of the talking, while they were amazed/enthralled/or at least politely interested to learn of a part of modern life and scientific research that they knew almost nothing about but found pretty darn intriguing.  My favorite of many such encounters was when my seat neighbor turned out to be a very earnest and energetic young lady who taught junior high science and routinely included a section in her curriculum about deep ocean research as conducted by the Deep Sea Drilling Project aboard the drillship Glomar Challenger (much more about the Challenger and DSDP later).  She was delighted to find out that I was on my way back from serving as a working participant on a DSDP expedition on the Challenger (2 months in duration, known then as a “Leg”).  She knew the back story in greater detail than most and her initial response went something along the lines of – OMG, you are FAMOUS.  Well, not really, but lack of fame in this line of work is another part of the overall story I would like to tell eventually.  This lack of fame thing correlates to issues of corresponding lack of funding, popular support, and so on; it is a long story, in some ways a little sad, but in others, downright inspiring.

     Besides my belief that the airline passenger responses indicated a widespread and unfulfilled public interest, there is another aspect that I think is important – there are few spokespeople who reach the general population on these subjects to any degree of penetration into the public consciousness.  So I will add my voice.  Without too much effort I could list 100 people, colleagues, who would be at least as qualified as I am to tell these tales.  And there are plenty of official science and technology organizations intimately involved who do all they can to reach the public.  And in addition, virtually all of the participating academic, governmental, and NGO constituencies have means to speak out and report officially on the work and the scientific results.  They all have as much presence as possible on the worldwide web.  In recent years most of them have increased their organizational emphasis on “educational outreach” programs aimed at spreading the word as far and wide as possible for all of the laudable and obvious reasons.  (Example:  I was in the deep research submersible, the Alvin, a few years ago, operating at about 8000 feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, where my two companions and I actually took a few minutes from our mission to conduct a bizarre verbal communication, real time, with a group of school kids in their class at a junior high in California.  So I know the outreach folks are trying, they really are.)  But a lot is still missing in that hit and miss dialogue with the citizens of the world.  Sadly, the breadth of the outreach effort is limited by fiscal, manpower and journalistic realities.

     In short, there is not, has not been, and probably never will be any Jacques Cousteau equivalent for popularizing the kind of information I plan to include.  Sampling for research under the bottoms of the world’s oceans is never going to be as sexy and awe-inspiring as space travel (more on that later).  Nor as well funded, I might add.  To reach a larger audience one must first capture their imagination; tough to do when the subject is rocks and mud from under the oceans as compared to possible life on Mars or a colony on the moon.  

     This blog will be my personal contribution to the educational outreach effort.  Tune in when you feel like it, come along for the ride, give me some reader feedback and if you like it recommend it to some friends.  If I can’t make this fun and a bit intriguing then there won’t be much point.



DSDP 10th Anniversary Commenorative Tile/Coaster

    

 The backbone of this blog:  I will tell this story as a first-person, I-was-there account for the most part but I will also back up what I write with some appropriate references (the internet makes that SO simple these days) to add substantiation and, also, to enable any interested readers to get a head start if they would like to delve deeper into any of the sub-topics.  I make no claim to be a final or even best authority on 95% of the topics I hope to cover.  The 5% where I do claim to have detailed, insider knowledge is centered around the technology developed to assist in conducting this research – technology (tools and techniques) not available commercially because only deep ocean geoscientists actually need such things so the equipment had to be developed specifically for them.

   

    And one final teaser:  here are some chapter topics I intend to cover; and hopefully many, many more.  In no particular order,

·        Mohole and DSDP:  Where it began

·        Earth is lot more unexplored than you think

·        What is deep ocean geo-research?  Who does this work, who pays for it, how much of it goes on, and why does it matter at all?  (Isn’t industry going to do all of this eventually anyway?)

·        About the ships (no, the Glomar Explorer is NOT part of this group, that’s a different story altogether)

·        OK, if it is so interesting, give us some fascinating examples of what has been discovered

·        Deep ocean drilling and global warming – Yes, there is a big connection

·        Deep ocean drilling and the end of the dinosaurs

·        Life aboard a research drillship for two months at a time

·        Energy resources from under the oceans – It is not all oil and gas

·        How are the samples and measurements acquired?:  A primer on the technology

·        What is done with the samples?:  An even simpler primer on the science

·        Wait, you say there is life down there deep under the oceans?

For some comprehensive background on DSDP and ODP, see:

The Greatest Science Program in History

The Deep Sea Drilling Project and Its Successors

By Andrew Alden, About.com Guide

http://geology.about.com/cs/escibasics/a/aa101203a.htm

Anecdotes -- Each submission will include an anecdote, mostly humorous, almost completely true.  These will come from actual life-at-sea events that occurred during research expeditions all over the world in which I was personally involved, or else got this story second hand from someone I trust who was there.  Here is the first: 

 “A Collision at Sea Will Ruin Your Whole Day”.

Glomar Challenger

     The drillship Glomar Challenger was approaching a pre-selected drill site a few hundred miles off the pacific coast of Central America at about dusk one day.  As usual, the ship was towing seismic profiling gear to “see” into the seabed and verify that the correct site was reached.  The towed gear runs out just below the surface several hundred feet behind the moving vessel, making the ship a bit un-maneuverable – speed must be kept fairly constant and turns must be slow and wide to protect the gear.  As the Challenger approached the site the inimitable Captain Joe Clarke (James Cagney reborn) noticed a cruise ship making for the same area from a few miles away.  Anyone who sailed with Capt. Clarke knew what a stickler he was for proper rules of the road at sea.  He was a veteran of the U.S. Navy and American merchant marine and was especially vigilant about potential ship-to-ship collisions, which he repeatedly proclaimed almost always happened when near-collision courses turned into a an actual collision because one or both parties panicked at the last instant.  Over the bridge entryway on the Challenger he had affixed a brass plaque inscribed with, “A Collision at Sea Will Ruin Your Whole Day”. 

    So, to prevent any mishaps the Captain radioed the nearby cruise ship to inform them that although their ship might appear to have right of way, in this situation we did because we were towing gear.  At the end of the conversation (heard by everyone on the bridge) the Captain was outraged.  The off-brand cruise ship was apparently crewed by an Albanian captain with an Indonesian crew and had a Greek registry, or some other combination, thoroughly unsavory and suspect in the eyes of Capt. Clarke.  When asked to alter course slightly to remove any possibility of a collision the cruise ship captain answered, “I can’t do that, mon, I got strict orders from head office to maintain assigned course and speed to save fuel.”

    Captain Clarke was livid, uttered a few choice words, but went back to the plotting board and determined that at present courses and speeds the two ships would not actually collide, but pass no closer than 200 yards from each other.  Figuring it was the best he would get in the situation Capt. Clarke called back, informed the cruise ship captain of the exact situation and made him promise NOT to change course or speed.   The other captain agreed, promised to make no sudden changes, and we all watched as the two ships did indeed pass about 200 yards apart, a testament to Capt. Clarke’s adroit plotting skills.  The cruise ship went by and disappeared over the horizon, the Challenger located the site, retrieved the towed seismic gear and turned back to take up position for drilling. 

    An hour or so later, we received a call from the cruise ship captain – “Hey, mon, hokay I change course now?  I got to go to Acapulco.”