Set A: #1-10

Set B: #11-20

Set C: #21-30

Set D: #31-40

Slide captions

High-resolution images

Ocean Drilling Program Slide Set

JOIDES Resolution, is 470 feet long and 70 feet wide. The ship's derrick towers 202 feet above the waterline. A computer-controlled dynamic positioning system, supported by 12 powerful thrusters and two main shafts, maintains the ship over a specific location while drilling into water depths up to 27,000 feet. A seven-story laboratory stack and other scientific facilities located fore and aft occupy 12,000 square feet.

Slide #4, #29, #38
The Underway Geophysics Laboratory is on the fantail under the helipad. While the ship is in transit between drill sites, digital single-channel seismic reflection profiles are collected and processed. These profiles provide a cross-sectional "view" of the earth beneath the seafloor.

Other equipment used in transit are an echo sounder (a device which measures water depth) and a magnetometer (an instrument which is towed behind the ship to measure the earth's magnetic field).

Slide #5
The Ocean Drilling Program is primarily funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation with significant contributions from 21 member countries.

Slide #6
Crew preparing to test new drilling technology using a water hammer drill. ODP was the first to test this technology in deep ocean waters.

Slide #7
The ship can deploy up to 30,000 feet of drill string.

Slide #8
Complete library, electronic repair, computer and photographic services are available to the scientists on the ship. JOIDES Resolution is equipped with more than 100 computers ranging from Macintosh and PC platforms to powerful Unix systems.

Slide #9
The drawworks is a hoisting mechanism that acts like a giant fishing reel or winch. It operates the drilling line that connects to the traveling block and heave compensator. The traveling block is a system of pulleys that raises and lowers the drill string. The heave compensator, with a 400-ton working load, compensates for the ship's vertical movement.

Slide #10
Reentry cones are used to reenter an existing hole and are positioned using either sonar or an underwater television system.

Slide #11
The pore water sampler/temperature probe measures sediment temperatures in the hole.

Slide #12
An iron roughneck is a device that spins joints of drill pipe together.

Slide #13 - #17
Activity on the rig floor. The ship sails with a crew of 65, which includes rig floor personnel, the catering crew and merchant seamen. The rig floor personnel work around the clock recovering rocks and sediments from the seafloor.

Slide #18, #23
After whole-core analysis, the cores are split lengthwise. One half of the core is designated as the working section; the other half is the archive section, which is described and photographed for future reference.

Scientists take samples from the working half for both shipboard and shore-based analysis. The shipboard curatorial representative inventories all samples and enters the information in a computer. No samples are taken from the archive half.

Slide #19
The Multisensor Track System measures the cores' density, porosity and velocity. It also measures the cores' magnetic susceptibility.

Slide #20
The 30-foot (9.5-meters) core is brought from the rig floor to the "catwalk," a platform outside the laboratories where the core is prepared for analysis.

Slide #21, #30
Sectioning core on the catwalk. The 9.5-meter cores are brought here from the rig floor to be sectioned into 1.5-meter lengths.

Slide #22, #33
The paleomagnetic equipment on board the ship gives scientists the capability to record the magnetization intensities and directions of rocks and sediments as cores are recovered. Distinctive patterns of magnetic field reversal records are used with other stratigraphic data to tell geologic time within the rocks and sediments.

Thin sections produced aboard ship from hard rocks and consolidated sediments are examined using petrographic microscopes.

Slide #24 - #25
Macroscopic and microscopic descriptions of the recovered core material are obtained in the core laboratory. Descriptive terminology is defined, providing a common geological language for scientists from different countries and institutions.

Sedimentologists and petrologists take turns describing the cores.

Slide #26
Scientists are assigned to sampling shifts to obtain materials for shipboard and shore-based analysis.

Slide #27
The ship's deck provides spectacular views of sunrises and sunsets.

Slide #28
The underwater television camera, supported by this frame, greatly enhances the ship's ability to locate and reenter drill holes.

The drill string reenters a previously drilled hole using a guide horn as a target for reentry. An acoustic beacon communicates the guide horn's position continuously to the computer-based dynamic positioning system. The positioning system controls the main propulsion system and 12 powerful thrusters, which maintain the ship's position over the drill hole.

Slide #30
JOIDES Resolution microbiology laboratory. This photo is showing a "Glove Bag" used to extract pristine samples in an inert environment.

Slide #31
In the physical properties lab, scientists study the bulk, dynamic, mechanical and thermal properties of material. Thermal conductivity is measured by a multi-needle probe, a computer-assisted system that can simultaneously monitor five positions.

Other equipment includes a Gamma Ray Attenuation Porosity Evaluator (GRAPE), a mechanized scanning device that indirectly measures the bulk density and porosity of rocks and sediments; an automated pycnometer; a GDS consolidation system that measures the mechanical properties of a sample; and a velocimeter.

Physical properties are also measured by lowering instruments down the drill hole.

Slide #32, #34
At the end of each cruise, core samples are removed from the ship and delivered to the Bremen Core Repository in Germany and the Gulf Coast Repository in College Station, Texas, USA.

Cores are housed in refrigerated storage space in the repositories.

Slide #35
As soon as a core containing deep-sea sediment arrives on deck, paleontologists obtain a sample from the core catcher to examine under the microscope. They assign the sample to its proper biostratigraphic zone, organizing sedimentary layers into time units based on the abundance and species of fossils.

Slide #36
The Chemistry Lab's equipment performs geochemical analyses on both organic and inorganic samples.

Slide #37
Safety drills are conducted on a regular basis during each ODP expedition. In this photo, a scientist is trying on a safety suit designed to protect a person from exposure to cold temperature waters.