Multimedia Gallery
Drill onboard Ocean Drilling Program ship
Using equipment like the drill pictured here, workers with Texas A&M University's Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) obtain geologic samples from the deep seafloor that provide scientists with new information about the Earth's history. Examples of information documented by these samples include a history of the ocean basins and evidence of drastically changing climates in the Earth's past including more ice ages than were previously known.
ODP, which is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and 22 international partners, explores on a global scale, the crust beneath the ocean in order to learn more about the composition, structure and history of the submerged portion of the Earth's surface. The drilling process involves collecting and logging geologic samples from the floor of deep-ocean basins through rotary coring and hydraulic piston coring. The logs and samples of the cores are available to qualified scientists throughout the world for research projects.
Samples have been taken at various sites including the North Atlantic Ocean, Norwegian Sea, Mediterranean Sea, southern and equatorial Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean off the west coast of South America, Weddell Sea off Antarctica, Indian Ocean, and western and equatorial Pacific Ocean.
The general contractor for the overall management and operation of ODP is Joint Oceanographic Institutions Inc., a consortium of major U.S. oceanographic institutions. The drilling operations are managed by Texas A&M University; logging is managed by the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University
Credit: Texas A&M University
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