Glomar Challenger: Enter IPOD.

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Author: Unknown

For more than seven years, the research vessel Glomar Challenger has plied the seas for the Deep Sea Drilling Project, extracting core samples from the ocean floor in the course of a multi-legged journey that has carried it the equivalent of more than 10 times around the earth. Following its most recent journey, Leg 44, it put in at Norfolk, Va., on Sept. 30 for its first major refurbishment in all that time, from which it will reemerge late this month into an expanded version of the project: the International Phase of Ocean Drilling, or IPOD.

During Leg 44, as if to signal the coming transition, the ship's drilling crew set a record for the deepest penetration ever made into the sea bottom--1,412 meters, which yielded late Jurassic sediments as much as 140 million years old. A major accomplishment of the leg was the recovery of samples from a previously suspected submerged reef, presently about 225 miles east of St. Augustine, Fla., on the rim of the Blake Plateau in nearly 9,000 feet of water. The limestone-rich reef was apparently above sea level several times during its lifetime, before finally sinking beneath the waves for good about 125 million years ago. Confirmation of the reef's presence, according to the University of Delaware's Robert E. Sheridan, is important for future projects seeking minerals and fuels on the continental shelf.

IPOD (SN: 1/4/74, p. 9) is scheduled to begin Nov. 27, when the Challenger sails northeastward from San Juan to spend most of two months drilling just west of the crest of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, about 10 degrees south of the region explored by Project FAMOUS, the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study (SN: 8/24/74, p. 118). The drilling program has long had extensive participation by foreign scientists, so the transition to IPOD will be a subtle one. The primary difference will be that foreign organizations are becoming members of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep-Earth Sampling (JOIDES), which provides scientific advice to the project. The Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany signed on in 1974 (Germany is renegotiating its participation but is expected to continue); Great Britain and Japan have since joined, and France is in the process.

The participating foreign institutions each have "pet sites" at which they would like to drill, but each is also providing surface ships to survey agreed-upon sites in advance, as well as ready access to various national research capabilities.