The Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) commenced its field operations with a Shakedown and Sea Trials cruise of its unique drilling and scientific research vessel--the 470-ft. dynamically-positioned vessel JOIDES Resolution--in January of 1985 (Leg 100). We now have the experience of two years of operations on twelve internationally staffed voyages (Legs 101–112; January 1985 to December 1986) in the Atlantic Ocean (the Mediterranean, Norwegian, and Labrador Seas and Baffin Bay) and in the south eastern Pacific. The core samples and geophysical logs collected aboard these cruises have already given scientists a better understanding of the ages of the ocean basins and their processes of development, the rearrangement of continents with time, the structure of the Earth's interior, the evolution of life in the oceans, and the history of worldwide climatic changes. This paper gives an overview of the Ocean Drilling Program, a review of its second year of scientific drilling operations, and a discussion of future science plans off Antarctica and in the Indian Ocean.
Each cruise aboard JOIDES Resolution is approximately eight weeks long, carries a scientific and technical complement of 50 persons, a ship's crew of about 60 persons, and in general, addresses a particular set of Earth science objectives in a particular geographic region. Although similar principles of drilling practice apply for both industrial and scientific drilling, there are important differences in equipment and procedures. The prime objective in oilfield drilling is to reach the target depth as efficiently as possible with coring done only as appropriate. In scientific drilling, the primary objectives are to understand the composition and properties of the strata in the Earth's crust. That objective requires continuous coring, and the cores must remain undisturbed for analysis; in addition, drilling and coring of the hard rock basaltic oceanic basement are also required.
Hence, scientific drilling may take considerably longer than commercial drilling to achieve the same penetration depth and require special techniques for recovery of the core.
The ODP, with Texas A&M University (TAMU) as the Science Operator, is the successor program to the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography of the University of California at San Diego. ODP is funded by the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI Inc.), a non-profit corporation comprising the 10 major U.S. oceanographic institutions which, in turn, is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), an independent U.S. federal agency, and six members (France, West Germany, Canada, Japan, United Kingdom, and the European Science Foundation Ocean Drilling Consortium) to date. It is anticipated that the USSR will soon become the seventh member. Scientific advice comes from JOIDES--Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling--an international consortium of the ten JOI institutions, as well as the members from the six non-U.S. countries.
The Ocean Drilling Program relocated to its new facility at the Texas A&M Research Park in College Station, Texas (Figure 1) in November 1986. This 59,000 sq. ft. facility now provides space for the technical, scientific, and administrative staff of the program and has refrigerated core storage, curatorial facilities, shorebased laboratories, and conference rooms.
