TXESS Revolution

Imagine that it is December 12, 1998 and that you are part of the science team on board the drillship, the JOIDES Resolution. You have just set sail from Fremantle, Australia as the expedition’s logging scientist under Co-Chief Scientists Fred Fry and Mike Coffin on a two-month expedition to the Kerguelen plateau as part of ODP Leg 183. The goal of the expedition is to drill a suite of holes 200 meters into the plateau to determine how long it took to form the Kerguelen LIP, to establish the volume of lava extruded over that period of time and its composition, and to understand the role of the Kerguelen hotspot.

The IODP riserless drillship, JOIDES Resolution, takes core samples from the ocean floor. During drilling, the drill pipe is lowered to the seafloor and as the drill bit cuts through layers of sediments and rocks, cores of the sub-seafloor material are collected and inside the drill pipe and returned to the ship. Once the cores have been extracted from a drill hole, the drill hole itself can become a laboratory.

In geophysical downhole logging, scientists lower special instruments (logging tools) into the drill hole to record the in situ physical, structural and chemical properties of the surrounding rock. During this exercise you will download logging data and analyze it within the scientific objectives of the cruise.