A widely held hypothesis about what bumped the dinosaurs off the top of the food chain 65 million years ago is that a very large meteorite crashed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and set off a mass extinction event. Evidence that demonstrated the before and after effects of the impact was discovered in 1997 when a sediment core was recovered during Leg 171B of the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP).

The core showed the boundary change in geological periods from the Cretaceous to Tertiary. Sandwiched between the pale gray pre- and post-extinction layers is the dark gray ejecta layer. This layer contains material blasted from the impact crater into the atmosphere that eventually settled out over days and months into the Earth’s oceans. The rust-colored “fireball” layer, containing dust and ash fallout from the impact, sits between the ejecta and post-extinction layers. It is a dramatic display of a violent time shift.

This core is just one of many cores that demonstrate the important work done by what is now known as the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). The focus of this international program is to support marine research that explores Earth’s history and dynamics using ocean-going research platforms to recover data recorded in seafloor sediments and rocks and to monitor subseafloor environments.

According to IODP, advances in piston coring in the 1940s allowed research ships to routinely recover long sediment sections from the seafloor. The successful use of dynamic positioning in 1961 to keep the drilling platform CUSS on target in strong currents established scientific drilling as a key tool in studying the Earth’s subseafloor geology. The Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) began in 1966 and with the D/V Glomar Challenger made advances in deepsea operations. The D/V JOIDES Resolution (JR) replaced the Glomar Challenger in 1985 at the start of the new program, ODP. The JR conducted 110 ODP expeditions with 2,000 drill holes located throughout the ocean basins of the world. Ending in 2003, ODP became the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program, which continued to build upon the scientific success of the DSDP and ODP with a revamped JR serving as its drilling vessel.

Like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole, I fell into the offshore wonderland when I stepped onto the deck of the JR in 2004. It was not difficult to see at that time the importance of the partnership between the offshore scientific research community and the petroleum industry.

In June 2005 we spent several weeks in the Gulf of Mexico (GoM), not too far from Shell’s Ursa platform, recovering sediment cores that would help further our understanding of how rapid sedimentation affects seafloor stability in the deepwater GoM. Good knowledge to have when considering placement of pipelines, subsea components, and such on the seafloor. Thank you, Science.

Offshore