Drilling Deeper


By now the novelty of the experience has worn off and the thrill of high-recovery deep drilling in gabbro has faded to the everyday work of processing huge amounts of hard rock core. Leg 176 has now achieved the deepest penetration of any single hard rock drilling leg (over 800 meters and counting!). The drill floor crews bring up the core day and night, and the scientific party and ODP crew curate it, describe it and put it away.

The evening drill floor crew (from left): Floormen Ramon Basanes and Gregorio "JoJam" Matagnone, Derrickman Juan "John" Vito, Floorman Saturnino Pepito, Asst. Driller Sam Fadri, Driller Phil Christie and the VARCO IR-2100 Iron Roughneck "Bigfoot" (in the back wearing red).
The morning crew: Derrickman Alejandro "Bobby" Cortez, Floorman Generoso "Sabah" Quizon, Asst. Driller Fernando "Nandy" Punzalan, Floormen Eduardo "Eddie" Tan and Mario Codilla (seated), Driller Colin Bremner and the Rock Bit Industries C-7 TCI Rotary Coring Bit (front).
Core Tech Bubba Attryde, Operations Manager Mike Storms and Co-chief Scientist Hank Dick show off a remarkably long piece of core, 2.05 meters long! They're standing on the core receiving platform, just outside the core lab, where newly cut cores come from the drill floor. Phil, one of the drillers, showing off his masterpiece of fine drilling (1.87 meters).
Inside the core lab, the night crew are waiting to curate and describe the core.
From the left, Drew Patrick, Aaron Yoshinobu (front) Jeff Gee (back), Barb John, Sarah Haggas, Ralph Stephen, Pat Trimby, Horst Worm, Greg Hirth, Michelle hardee, Benoit Ildefonse, Eric Meissner, Daniel Bideau.

At least until the day crew shows up: Lorraine Southey, Yaoling Niu (front) Pat Trimby (back), Gerry Iturrino, Petrus le Roux Dick Naslund, Offie Ofeigursson, Paul Holm, Horst Worm, Peter Meyer, Andrew Kingdon, Jinichiro Maeda, Jon Snow, and Co-chief Jim Natland. Pat and Horst simply work all the time, that's why they're in both pictures.

Previous week
Back to Leg 176 Gallery.


Jon Snow 15-11-97