IODP as an ECS

Left to Right: ESO's Alex Wülbers, Associate Professor
Marco Coolen and myself at breakfast

As a follow-up on the ‘a packing list for working offshore’ blog I wanted to talk about my experience on the ship itself, but (as previously mentioned), this is not a new idea because, quite simply, it’s an exciting experience to talk about. As a consequence, there are already lots of good blogs out there about the actual living process such as what eating is like, sleeping arrangements, and especially large numbers of blogs about the work itself – shift patterns, what was discovered, etc.… Whilst I’m on the subject though I would recommend the IODP Expedition 364 blog, even though the offshore phase of the expedition has now completed it is still a good read and will introduce you far better than I can to what life was like offshore. There are good blogs on what daily life was like on the Myrtle; the drilling process and operations; and the science itself.

So with most major topics covered by voices that carry more authority than mine; I wanted to talk about the times in between working and operations, the free time. Because this is the stuff that has really stuck with me since I returned. Now before I go any further I want to preface the rest of this by saying “this is not an advert for working with the IODP”. Although I can’t help it if you take it that way and I would still recommend it personally… especially to Early Career Scientists (ECS’s).

Everyone was a long way from home

Bountiful free time is never guaranteed when working offshore because each day presents a new set of and interesting problems to tackle. Even in the middle stages of the expedition when you might expect everything to be taking care of itself and when there are generally fewer ‘peripheral’ jobs that need doing such as setting up, cleaning and packing down equipment. When I was on board there were several days when spare time was a valuable commodity because rock core and fresh samples were arriving very hour; and there were some days when the drilling team were changing a drill bit (yes, this is as literal as it sounds) and I needed to be a little more creative with how I filled my time (although there are always things that need doing and it’s easy to fill the time with QAQC and calibration checks). So what did I do with my time? There were a few things going on. I could make a sign that pointed in the direction of home and the number of kilometres to get there (photo); I could enter the photo competition for a chance to be featured in the next iteration of the ECORD calendar; I could play a strange form of quoits using the end-caps of cores; lots of options. Usually though, I would sit and chat with the other scientists about the science itself (If you aren’t aware already I was offshore on IODP Expedition 364: Chicxulub Impact Crater, have a read, exciting stuff!). When you are offshore on a scientific drilling expedition though, there are times where chit-chat can be hard to come by because other participants are busy with work, overwhelmed with human contact and wanting to be left alone, or asleep. But there other occasions, usually during a shift change when scientists and engineers are out of their containers or off the drill floor that are golden opportunities not to be missed.

At this point I should introduce why people make the insane choice to live on a 42 m long platform with 33 other people for up to 2 months. Because they love what they do, it’s their passion. And this makes for some rather interesting free time conversations, because there isn’t really any cognitive free time… and that’s fine! Personally I was on shift with: impact petrologist Auriole Rae, organic Geochemist Marco Cooleen, and expedition co-chief scientist Sean Gulick; along with a whole host of ESO staff – all specialists and successful scientists in their own right.  Such diversity meant that conversation topics ranged from meteorite impact models to rock core curation processes; making quick stops at microbiological and geochemical testing methods. As well as simple things like: ‘what’s for dinner’ and ‘how many days after you get home will it take to binge-watch Game of Thrones’. Now bear with me here because this is the point where I may lose your trust and you may start to believe that this is indeed an advert. Collaboration and knowledge sharing are both fundamental corporate values to the IODP. It says right at the beginning of the IODP Science Plan for the period 2013-2023, in the Executive Summary section: “This science plan for the International Ocean Discovery Program is intended to guide multidisciplinary, international collaboration in scientific ocean drilling during the period 2013 to 2023.” When I read this I envisioned formal invites to conferences and black tie events where participants critique one another’s work, listing the pros and cons of working together. And these events may still occur, in addition to the informal exchanges I experienced offshore.

Not a bad view I'd say

There are no conference rooms on a research vessel, everyone has to wear personal protective equipment (overalls, hardhats, steel toe-capped boots and safety goggles), and you are on a boat, a very small boat… so conferences are not a practical choice. Instead, people just talk. Simple. And these conversations are what I meant by ‘golden opportunities’ earlier. Now just because I refer to them as casual conversations does not mean that they were hand-wavy or nebulous. These were more like deep dives into scientific hot topics because the conversationalists are passion driven experts in the process of discovery. And if that little question: “why?” was ever dropped in; the likelihood is it would release a torrent of fact-based and fully sourced justifications. They still weren’t formal though; despite being intense! Most discussions were spontaneous and happened over an ice-cream at sunset, or with a cup of tea at the midnight shift change. And THIS was what stuck with me, there was no pressure, no judgement, just a passion for science.

I know personally that I came away from a week at sea knowing far more about a much wider range of topics simply by being involved in such a project. I can honestly say that the expedition has been the most motivational week of my life, and I had already decided that I love what I do. That is why I recommend getting involved with IODP if you are an ECS, not just because it is exciting to be on the front lines of discovery for your OWN science; but because you are on the front of everyone else’s as well and you never know where that may take you.

Laurence

A Packing List for Life Offshore

The topic of “my first offshore science expedition” is nothing new in the blogging world. I personally have read a couple as they are common topics on the JOIDES Resolution blog, and is anyone surprised? It’s an exciting experience that potentially only happens once-in-a-lifetime. With this in mind I’m going to talk about the week preceding the expedition and what it is like to prepare to go offshore instead.

The formalities:
• Expedition: IODP Expedition 364: Chicxulub Impact Crater
• Position: Multi-Sensor Core Logger Operator
• Length: 1 week, maybe more with good behaviour

The streets of Merida, Mexico, city stop on the way to
the platform

Now let’s get on with it. First and foremost, it’s unusual and involves a different mind-set from holiday packing. Preparing for a holiday usually involves thinking: “what do I want to do in all my free time?” whereas this was closer to: “what do I need to be comfortable and keep me busy during downtime so that I don’t get on everyone else’s nerves”. I’m good at that.

So the first things to go in the bag were essentials of course: clothes, toothbrush, sunglasses, etc. Then followed by more unique items, steel toe capped boots, insect repellent, work stuff. Fieldwork is part of learning to be a geologist so this isn’t entirely my first rodeo, but this is not a typical kind of field that I am going to work in. You really don’t need to pack all that much in terms of clothes either, thanks to the Mexican climate. It is between 26 and 40 degrees at this time of year, day and night. Also, overalls are part of the compulsory PPI so there isn’t much choice beyond which pair of shorts and which t-shirt to wear underneath it. Inspiring I know.

The Lift Boat Myrtle: home for the next week or so

What to do in downtime was a bit of a head scratcher: I’m a Millennial, the internet is where I get most of my entertainment; so how is this going to happen when 30 km offshore? And what about exercise, it’s a 42 m platform with virtually no hull and 33 people on board, where am I going to find the space to even swing a rope? Well, spoiler alert! There’s wifi, although it is pretty slow, and an exercise area outside with free weights so there was no need to worry. I had already settled on music for entertainment though. Plenty of varied music and several sets of headphones (along with a couple of good books obviously). Again, you really don’t need that much because there isn’t much time when you’re working 12 hour shifts.

In fact by the time I was done packing I could fit everything into a large backpack if I had tried really hard, and I think I will if I have the opportunity in future. This was my final packing list: Shorts? Check; t-shirts? Check; undies? Check; steel toe-capped boots? Check; toothbrush and stuff? Check; a couple of good books? Check; done.

So that’s it, nothing too complicated. All that was left was to finalise flights. For those of you who don’t know, exploratory scientific drilling is not an exact science because you never know exactly what you are going to find; and this makes judging the rate of expected progress tricky. So I had to work a bit of leeway into my schedule; flying out a bit earlier and booking flights back for a bit later than expected because there was no way that I was going to be responsible for delaying this multi-million dollar expedition! But, more on the expedition itself and whether I enjoyed the experience or not next time.

Laurence

Chicxulub’s peak ring: exceptional geologist bling

Sometimes there are not many places to look for a specific geological feature. The peak ring of the Chicxulub crater is the perfect example: it is the only unequivocal instance of a peak ring known on Earth. Some others may have existed in the past but have since been eroded through geological time. When geoscientists come to study peak rings, they can look through a telescope, at Venus or The Moon. But when testing hypotheses on Earth, the only known analogue is located beneath the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico.

Source: ECORD

A peak ring results from rock displacement when a meteorite collides with a rocky body. At Chicxulub, current hypotheses suggest that the impact was so powerful the rocks at the site behaved like a fluid. Like a droplet into water, the collision generates an uplift at the centre of the crater, this uplift then collapses outwardly to form a peak ring. International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition 364 will investigate specifically, and for the first time, the peak ring of Chicxulub Impact Crater: here the structure forms a circle 80 km in diameter. In April and May 2016, 30 km north from the coast of Yucatán, an international team on board Liftboat (L/B) Myrtle will attempt to drill and sample a 1.5 km deep borehole to reach the peak ring. The feature is now preserved beneath 17 m of water and more than 650 m of Cenozoic carbonates at the drilling site.

The logo for Expedition 364, ©ECORD

The main expedition goal is to shed light on the physical processes involved in the formation of peak rings. The collision also likely resulted in the sterilisation of the impact site; and so another key objective aims to evaluate if and how microorganisms re-established in the peak ring; and the role of hydrothermal systems at the post-collision event site. Geophysicists, sedimentologists, geochemists, microbiologists, micropalaeontologists and petrologists from the UK, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Netherlands, France, China, Japan, Australia, USA, Canada and Mexico will work together during the project to address these questions.

The European Petrophysics Consortium (EPC) is heavily involved in this expedition, as part of the ECORD (European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling) Science Operator (ESO). Johanna Lofi (University of Montpellier), Erwan Le Ber and Laurence Phillpot (University of Leicester) will coordinate all of the downhole and core petrophysical measurements. Data collected downhole provide a continuous record of rock properties along the borehole. A multi-sensor core logger (MSCL) is used to measure physical properties of recovered cores, at a resolution of 2 cm. By comparing downhole and core logging the exact depth of the cores in the borehole can be calculated; a very important aspect of this expedition, as key horizons such as the PETM and the K-Pg boundary should be sampled. Finally, the combination of downhole and core petrophysical measurements will be crucial to test current hypotheses of peak ring formation. This expedition represents an exceptional opportunity to investigate a truly exciting geological feature: this unique peak ring, testimony of one of Earth’s most dramatic events.

Equipment being loaded onto the L/B Myrtle, ©Sally Morgan, Leicester

After the offshore phase of the expedition, core samples will be sent to the IODP Bremen Core Repository in Germany, where further analyses will be done this autumn. EPC will continue to coordinate the acquisition of more petrohysical data on the core material recovered.

You can keep up-to-date with project developments through the expedition webpage and by following @EPC_Research.

Erwan

Come Sail Onshore

The second ECORD training course: The Virtual Drillship Experience was held at MARUM, Bremen, from the 7th to the 11th of March 2016. This course originated from the very successful ECORD Summer School, also hosted by Bremen, that includes “Virtual Ship” sessions.  The concept, welcomed by the scientific drilling community, gives participants the opportunity to learn about expedition workflow and various analyses performed during offshore research drilling projects. The focus is more process related than the sister Summer Schools that always centre on one of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) scientific themes.  In response to the high demand and interest, The Virtual Drillship Experience was created. It is a unique occasion for scientists interested in sailing to become, or to become once more, familiar with IODP. MARUM is the ideal location to host this event: as it is one of the three IODP core repositories, with more than 150 km of cores, as well as laboratories and facilities we can find on a drillship.

Over 5 days, 29 participants from around the world and from different scientific disciplines were immersed in shipboard activities; covering physical properties, core logging, sediment visual core description and smear slide analysis, high-resolution linescan imaging and color scanning, biostratigraphy, pore water acquisition and analysis, and finally, hard rock core description. To guarantee optimal interaction with the tutors and the opportunity to gain hands-on experience with the equipment, participants were divided into 3 groups, rotating between the different labs and practical exercises. Tutors included many experienced senior scientists with significant experience in offshore expeditions, ensuring genuine and relevant examples. Early career researchers Anna Joy Drury (postdoc, MARUM) and Erwan Le Ber (IODP research associate, University of Leicester) also had the opportunity to participate in teaching, giving an introduction to core physical properties, with practicals on a multi-sensor core logger (MSCL) system and on discrete samples (Moisture and Density, Pycnometer).

Sampling session for Moisture and Density

The Virtual Drillship Experience is not only about participants familiarising themselves with offshore workflow and the different data acquisition methods. Our apprentice sailors also had to use their skills and knowledge acquired during the virtual drillship experience to interpret downhole logging data with Sarah Davies (University of Leicester) or to generate core correlations and age models. Participants were also introduced to the more general aspects of IODP; including curation, data management, sample requests and proposal writing. In 5 days, attendees covered the most fundamental aspects of shipboard activities, and we now wish them “fair winds and following seas”.

Click here for more information on The Virtual Drillship Experience, and here for other ECORD Courses and Summer Schools.

IODP Expedition 357: The Real Science Party

Staff from the European Petrophysics Consortium based at the University of Leicester have been working as part of a team on the IODP Expedition357: Atlantis Massif Serpentinization and Life. As the latest phase, the Onshore Science Party (OSP) reaches its conclusion; it’s time to look back at the OSP experience at the Bremen Core Repository at the MARUM in Germany.

IODP Expedition 357 is a major research project that is investigating the link between alteration processes (serpentinization) and extreme life. It has attracted much media attention, including items on the BBC and Bremen radio, not least because of its links to the origins of life and by extension the possibilities of extra-terrestrial life.

The Bremen Core Repository containing over
150 km  of core!

EPC’s involvement in this project centres on providing petrophysical expertise as part of the ECORD (European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling) Science Operator in conjunction with the BGS and MARUM. The offshore phase of this mission-specific platform (MSP) expedition took place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean between October and December 2015. Dr Sally Morgan, Petrophysics Staff Scientist on the expedition, analysed the ephemeral physical properties on the core whilst offshore as well as coordinating the downhole measurements programme. The core recovered from beneath the Atlantic seabed was then shipped to the Bremen Core Repository arriving there just before Christmas.  This is where the rest of the team came in, lead by Sally, and together forming the physical properties technical team working alongside four international scientists with interests in physical properties.

All of the scientists involved in Expedition 357, the Science Party, assemble for the first time at the OSP, only a few scientists were involved in the offshore phase. The science party includes 30 scientists from 12 countries and they are involved in sampling, measuring rock properties, and working on rock description and characterization. A set of standard measurements are acquired on every IODP expedition to ensure a consistent data contribution to the legacy databases. Broadly speaking these measurements span the disciplines and facilitate characterization of the rocks recovered, including physical properties and high-resolution digital imaging of the cores (the responsibility of Leicester's EPC team). During the OSP reports are written on the expedition data (find them at the bottom of the page linked here), and scientists discuss their personal research projects potentially forging collaborations.

So the Onshore Science Party is serious business, but is it also a party? Well yes and no. These teams worked around the clock (almost literally!) to develop a comprehensive record of the recovered rock in only 17 days! Yet, for many, the OSP is their first contact time with the recovered rocks, generating an almost tangible atmosphere of excitement and anticipation as each core is split and the story revealed. It is a fantastically encouraging environment for budding and early-career scientists: full of potential connections that may lead to future collaborations and opportunities. One such example of this interdisciplinary collaboration developed in the physical properties lab. One of the four science party members was microbiologist  Dr MattSchrenk. Matt’s research focuses on microbial life in extreme environments, and he had requested to be part of the OSP physical properties team so that he could learn about the moisture and density measurements acquired to investigate porosity.  Matt is interested in understanding how porosity might control the location of life within these rocks. The hope is that one day this research arising from Expedition 357 might aid in the search for extra-terrestrial life. A perhaps unexpected, and undeniably interesting connection.

The Expedition 357 OSP has been hard work for everyone involved so far and as the scientists and ESO staff begin to depart to their various corners of the globe, the lingering buzz of anticipation reminds everyone that the OSP is only really the start of the science. 

Sample, Log, Repeat: the quest for dating the retreat of the British Irish Ice Sheet

The BGS vibrocorer on the RRS James Cook

On 3 July 2015 EPC's Sally Morgan departed on a month-long research cruise (JC123) as part of the BRITICE-CHRONO project.

The JC123 cruise, led by Professor Colm O’Cofaigh of Durham University, is the second of 2 marine-based coring programmes that are central to the 5-year BRITICE-CHRONO NERC Consortium Grant which aims to collect and date material to constrain the timing and rates of change of the collapsing British-Irish Ice Sheet (BIIS).  This year’s project was staffed by scientists from a number of institutions across the UK, including the universities of Bangor, Durham, Leicester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Stirling, and Ulster, as well as the British Geological Survey.

Similar to the first BRITICE-CHRONO cruise (JC106) that took place in 2014, JC123 was on board the Royal Research Ship James Cook and set sail from Southampton. The cruise surveyed and sampled material along 3 main transects in The Minch, Shetland and the North Sea areas.  Coring targets in these transects were identified using the surveying data collected on board, notably multibeam echo sounder and sub-bottom profiler data.  Most of the cores were acquired utilising the British Geological Survey’s vibrocorer system (up to 6 m penetration), with a few cores sampled using the National Oceanographic Centre’s piston corer (up to 10 m penetration).  Over 170 individual cores were collected, totalling in excess of half a kilometre of core material. 

Once recovered to the ship, the cores were cut into metre-long sections and curated, after which they were measured on Leicester’s containerised Geotek multi-sensor core logger system, operated by Sally.  This system allows for the acquisition of the physical properties of the cores, including the bulk density, acoustic velocity, magnetic susceptibility and electrical resistivity.  Once the cores were measured they were returned to the core description team who split the cores in half lengthways, sampled and described the cores, and then packed them up ready for shipment to different institutions at the end of the cruise for further analyses (including C14-dating and optically stimulated luminescence dating) and archiving.  Used in combination with the descriptions and geochronological data derived from the cores, the physical properties data will be used to help better understand the timing of the BIIS recession at the end of the last glaciation.   

Work on these cores, the cores acquired during JC106, and material collected from the equivalent land-based studies, will continue through 2017, after which it is hoped that predictive ice sheet modelling will be significantly improved, with the BIIS forming an important benchmark.

Further information about the project is available via the BRITICE-CHRONO webpage and you can also follow the project’s progress on Twitter:  @BRITICECHRONO

Robots, rocks and research drilling

Seabed rock drills are a developing technology with the potential to offer a cost effective way of recovering geological materials from beneath the sea.  More conventional technologies drill and sample the sub-seafloor utilising drilling systems that are on board a ship or platform.  Seabed rock drills are robotic drilling systems that are deployed from a ship and lowered to the seafloor, attached to the ship by an umbilical which as well as providing a physical connection, also allows for the drill to be remotely-controlled and monitored by engineers on board. The latest version of the BGS rock drill is designed to drill and core up to 50 m below the seafloor and is set to be one of 2 such devices to be used on the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) Expedition to Atlantis Massif later in the year.  The second system to be utilised on this project is the MeBo80, a seabed rock drill developed by MARUM, University of Bremen, Germany.

On 17 August 2015 Sally Morgan, of the European Petrophysics Consortium (University of Leicester), joined the Northern Lighthouse Vessel Pharos with colleagues from the British Geological Survey (BGS) to test the latest iteration of their seabed rock drill, RD2. 

In addition to drilling and coring holes in the seabed, BGS have also purchased downhole logging probes to be deployed in the holes once drilling is completed.  These battery operated probes, will record in situ measurements of the physical properties of the formations that have been penetrated, as the drill string is retrieved to the rig.  Sally was invited by BGS to participate in the trials cruise in the Firth of Lorne as the downhole logging specialist.  She will be providing technical support and guidance on the logging tools and associated data during the trails and beyond.

The trials cruise on the Pharos is co-funded by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD), the BGS and industry partners.