New Opportunities and Challenges for Ocean Science Research

Sea Technology, Jan 2007 by Bohlen, Steve

The year 2007 will he a time of change, challenge and opportunity for the ocean sciences research community. The U.S. drillship for the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) will return to operation with refurbished laboratories, improved drilling capabilities and better living quarters. U.S. Congress-willing, the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) will be funded. The OOI will usher in a new era for oceans research, bringing us new insights into how the oeeans operate within the Harlh system and transforming how we conduct ocean research-and how we think about the ocean.

The Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI) and Consortium for Ocean Research and Education (CORF-) will merge this year so that program management, systems engineering, community support services, education, outreach and government relations will be coherently grouped within one organization. The result of the merger will be to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the programs JOl and CORF, manage on behalf of the oceans community and to unify the voice for ocean sciences in Washington. D.C.

Expeditions and Observatories

Since January 2006. a highlight for the JOl Alliance (JOI in partnership with Texas A&M University and the Lamont-Dohcrty Earth Observatory of Columbia University) has been our coupling of strong outreach efforts to publications in high-profile science journals of exciting findings stemming from two recent expeditions.

In April of last year, the IODP research party that recovered gahbros from intact ocean crust published their findings about this tlrsi-evcr accomplishment in Science. The team drilled in December 2005 to reach a fossil magma chamber 1.4 kilometers beneath the seatloor and pui the capstone on another first: bagging a continuous siring of core samples from all the layers of the Earth's crust from a single location.

The article's publication generated news stories from prominent news organizations, including The New York Times and the Associated Press. The stories also ran on several major online news sources.

The IUDP team that carried out the Cascadia Margin Gas Hydrates expedition aboard the JOI Alliance-operated JOiDES Resolution reported in the August 15, 2006. edition of EOS that they discovered a greater knowledge of how gas hydrate deposits form in nature. A natural geologie hazard, gas hydrate is largely natural gas and. thus, may significantly impact global climate change.

Contrary to expectations, IODP CoChief Michael Ricdol of McGiIl University, Montreal, confirmed, "We found anomalous occurrences of high concentrations of gas hydrate at relatively shallow depths 50 lo 120 meters below the seafloor."

IODP has expanded its base of international support by welcoming the Republic of Korea as its newest member. An Interim Asian Consortium was created, with South Korea's Korean Institute of Geoscienec and Mineral Resources as its first affiliated institution. By fiscal year (FY) 2005. the Interim Asian Consortium will contribute $1 million in funding to IODP. The consortium will also provide a scientist to IODP expeditions.

During lhe break between U.S.-operaled IODP scientific expeditions, a mutual agreement between Overseas Drilling Ltd. (College Station. Texas) and the JOI Alliance made it possible for the JOlDES Restitution to be employed in the India gas hydrate drilling program. In June 2006, the India gas hydrate drilling program discovered a sizeable accumulation of gas hydrates in the southern KaveriGodavari basin.

The Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Networks (ORION) program at JOI guides the planning of an integrated network of remote sensor, power and communications technologies for investigating complex atmospheric, ocean and liurih system processes and the linkages among them over a large range of time and space scales. U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committees have recommended that the FY 2007 appropriations bill for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) include lhe full S13.5 million requesied for the start of facilities construction. While final passage of the bill is not expected until after press time, the outlook is positive for the construction of the observatories to begin in FY 2008. ORION held a design and implementation workshop last March that engaged 275 representatives of the ocean research community in the draft conceptual network design, and solicited comments and recommendations about me design.

The IODP-associaled U.S. Science Support Program at JOI sponsored a round table session at the 11th International Symposium on Microbial Ecology in August 2006. The session focused on microorganisms in the marine subsurface and how interested parties could become involved in IODP, which provides unique access to microorganisms living hundreds of meters below the seafloor.

People

David Divins is the new director of ocean drilling programs at JOI. Divins had been the associate director of ocean drilling programs at JOl since January 20006. Frank Rack, former director of ocean drilling programs at JOl, departed JOI last August to become the executive director of the Antarctic Drilling Science Management Office at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln.