167 Preliminary Report

OPERATIONS REPORT

Operations Manager: Scott McGrath
Schlumberger Engineer: Raymond Faust

Leg 167 Operations were highly successful and met or exceeded all scientific objectives. Two new ODP records were set during the leg, with a total of 7501.54 m of core recovered and 52 holes drilled. The overall core recovery percentage for the leg was 97.3% for 840 cores over 13 sites. Outstanding results were obtained from both the advanced piston coring (APC) and extended core barrel (XCB) coring systems during the leg. The motor driven core barrel (MDCB) was also deployed successfully to obtain a fresh basalt sample at the conclusion of an APC/XCB hole. A total of 7 different sites were logged with excellent results obtained from the Triple Combination (density, neutron porosity, resistivity, and natural gamma ray), Formation MicroScanner (FMS), and Geological High-Sensitivity Magnetic Tool (GHMT) strings. The Adara temperature tool was deployed 44 times, obtaining 40 good data points.

A subsea television camera survey was run at two different sites: Site 1016 (proposed Site CA-11E) and Site 1018 (proposed Site CA-8A). Site 1016 was 5 nmi outside a former chemical munitions dumping area, and Site 1018 was 7 nmi outside of a former explosives dumping area. The survey at Site 1016 was negative, and coring proceeded normally. A small round artifact was discovered at Site 1018, the vessel was offset 150 m, and another survey was conducted with negative results allowing coring to commence normally. An examination of the first two cores at both sites was conducted with normal results.

A half-day port call was made in San Diego, California, on 7 May to unload approximately 1500 m of core. The port call was planned before the leg because the pre-leg estimate of 7300 m of core recovered exceeded the capacity of 6200 m for the refrigerated storage on board the vessel.

A rendezvous with a small boat from the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), occurred in the Santa Barbara channel on 12 May. The rendezvous allowed 5 small boxes of core to be sent to UCSB for immediate isotope analysis and biostratigraphy studies.

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