Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I am William W. Hay, Dean of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Miami and President of Joint Oceanographic Institutions Inc. JOI is a non-profit ocean research management organization comprising ten U.S. oceanographic institutions. I have been involved with deep sea drilling since 1965, even before the formation of the Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling Committees (JOIDES), now an operating division of JOI Inc., and before the inception of the Deep Sea Drilling Program (DSDP). I have served on the JOIDES Planning Committee from 1972-74, was its Chairman during the critical period 1972-74, when the Deep Sea Drilling Project achieved international support, and have served on the JOIDES Executive Committee since 1976. As a working scientist, I have personally examined thousands of samples recovered by the project starting with Leg 1, and am currently engaged in synthesis of the data produced by the 800 or so scientists who have been involved in this project. I welcome this opportunity to discuss the scientific goals of future deep sea drilling, and particularly the Ocean Margin Drilling Program (OMD). The continent-ocean transition, which is the focus of this program, represents the last great unknown frontier in the surficial geology of the earth. The passive continental margins, exemplified by that off the east coast of the United States, contain more than one-third of all the sediments on earth. More than two-thirds of this amount resides in the deeper part of the margin--the continental slope and rise--which is our special target. The nature of this great mass of sediment is largely unknown; it may or may not have potential as a resource area. In volume, it is equal to all the hydrocarbon-producing sedimentary basins on the continent proper. Prior to the DSDP our investigation of the seafloor was limited to piston coring and although we took vast numbers of them, these cores rarely achieved penetrations of 18 meters (60 feet) into the seafloor. The Deep Sea Drilling Project, using cores retrieved by drilling with the D/V GLOMAR CHALLENGER, has allowed routine penetration of 100 meters into the seafloor and in some holes 1000 meters and more. Although we have sampled far fewer sites with the GLOMAR CHALLENGER than with the simple piston corer, the ability to make deeper penetrations has had enormous impact on the science. We have opened up the history of the ocean basins to view, and the result has been significant advances not only in the geology of the ocean basins but in many related fields as well. The proposed Ocean Margin Drilling Program anticipates an initial drill string length of 10 kilometers (33,000 feet) and allow penetrations 5 times deeper than with present capability. Again, greater penetrations will be achieved at the expense of being able to sample fewer sites; though in fact core recovery will approach the 6,000 meters (20,000 feet) per year rate achieved by GLOMAR CHALLENGER over the last decade. However, we will be able to carry out extensive investigations of the ocean margins which we could heretofore examine only superficially. Ocean Margin Drilling has been proposed as a major component of deep sea drilling since the inception of the DSDP in 1967. By 1970, however, we had realized that deep penetrations in the ocean margin region involved unacceptable risks without full well control and blow-out prevention capabilities which were beyond the handling capabilities of GLOMAR CHALLENGER. This involves the use of a riser, a large pipe connecting the vessel to the seafloor through which the drill pipe is lowered and turned. The riser permits circulation of drilling mud into the hole to carry away the rock chips. Together with a seafloor blow-out prevention device, the system facilitates containment of hydrocarbon induced overpressures should they be encountered inadvertantly. Consequently, up to now, our ocean margin drilling has been limited to shallow penetrations in areas where we felt very confident that there could be no accumulations of oil or gas. Because the continental margins contain very great thicknesses of sediments, we have been able to examine only the top of the sediment column except in regions where the sediment accumulations are very thin. Of the first 418 sites drilled by the DSDP, 81 were in regions that could be described as typical continental margins and 85 in marginal sea basins. Even though we tried to preclude the possibility of hydrocarbon encounters, traces of oil or gas were found at 24 of the continental margin sites and 28 of the marginal sea basin sites. It became evident that investigation of this great unknown geological frontier could only be attempted with full well control using technology significantly advanced over that possible with the GLOMAR CHALLENGER. However, avoidance of hydrocarbon formation will remain a fundamental objective in site selection. Accordingly, JOIDES appointed a special committee to assess the future and to report on "The Future of Scientific Ocean Drilling" (FUSOD). The committee met in March, 1977, and heard reports from groups and individuals involved in study of the ocean margins, ocean crust and paleoenvironment. Alternative The methods of investigating these topics were considered. The heart of the program proposed rests in investigation of the passive continental margins which have resulted from breakup of the giant continent of Pangaea during the Mesozoic and Cenozoic Eras. The Atlantic margin off the east coast of the United States is a classic example of such a passive continental margin. (Figure 1) |