Costs to keep ocean drilling ship in port

Ten-year programme aims for rebirth in tough climate.

The JOIDES Resolution will spend less time at sea. Credit: E. Ganbat

An international effort to explore the little-known depths below the ocean floor is heading into choppy waters. Last week, the US branch of the 24-nation Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) received guidance on its budget allocation from the US National Science Foundation, one of the project's two main funders (the other being the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology). No cuts are anticipated to the US share of the project's budget, but a rise in fuel costs of more than 30% since the end of 2010 means that in the 2012 fiscal year the US drilling ship the JOIDES Resolution is expected to be at sea for only six months. It needs eight months to complete its four scheduled expeditions, so one project — to drill into the tectonic area off the southern coast of Alaska next summer — has been postponed.

In an open letter to colleagues last week, David Divins, director of ocean drilling programmes at the Consortium for Ocean Leadership in Washington DC, which helps to run the US component of the IODP, wrote, "I am extremely troubled by this news and the implications for the future of scientific ocean drilling."

News of the vessel's scaled-back season comes just as the IODP sets its scientific goals for its next ten years. The plan is expected to be finalized this month and released in June. It highlights an ongoing emphasis on the studies of geophysics and past climates that has dominated the programme's initial ten-year mandate, which runs until 2013. "Everything we know about climate older than a million years we know from the ocean drilling programme," says Maureen Raymo, chair of the IODP's main science evaluation committee.

The next phase will also up the emphasis on studies of deep biology, and will include more efforts to install instruments in boreholes to conduct real-time experiments, rather than simply pulling up cores. And this month, scientists will be meeting in Tokyo to discuss the possibility of drilling into the fault line of the great earthquake that hit Japan in March. If they can do so within the next two years, they should be able to detect the heat generated by the slip, a clue to energy transfer during quakes.

But logistical challenges have hobbled the IODP in the past. The JOIDES Resolution was out of action for nearly three years for refurbishments that took much longer than anticipated. A new Japanese vessel capable of drilling to extreme depths, the Chikyu, has done only about 14 months of active science service since mid-2007. It was also damaged by Japan's recent tsunami, causing the cancellation of one expedition.

As a result, and in the face of serious technological challenges, the IODP has been slow to meet its original objectives. Only two expeditions have been launched specifically to study the biosphere deep beneath the sea floor, a key goal. Meanwhile, just one deep core has been retrieved from the Arctic, another major target, and investigators are behind schedule on drilling into a subduction zone — where an oceanic plate slides beneath a continental one — to study earthquake mechanisms.

Ongoing battles over US government spending have some in the drilling community concerned that the programme's cost will make it a tough sell going forwards. Divins estimates that, in total, the four expeditions originally planned for the 2012 financial year would have cost about US$70 million. "We have to make a compelling case to keep this ship out there," says Raymo.

Related links

Related external links

IODP draft for 2013-2023

IODP expedition list

NSF 2012 budget request