John Dyke Marine Lab Specialist (Store Keeper)
John Eastlund Marine Computer Specialist
Tim Fulton Marine Lab Specialist (Photographer)
Edwin Garrett Marine Lab Specialist (Paleomagnetics)
Dennis Graham Marine Lab Specialist (Chemistry)
Thilo Greb Marine Lab Specialist
Michiko Hitchcox Marine Lab Specialist (Yeoperson)
Rich Johnson Marine Computer Specialist
Brad Julson Laboratory Officer
John Lee Marine Lab Specialist (Chemistry)
Kevin MacKillop Marine Lab Specialist (Physical Properties)
Eric Meissner Marine Electronics Specialist
Dwight Mossman Marine Electronics Specialist
Chieh Peng Marine Lab Specialist (Chemistry)
Thomas Pollaert Marine Lab Specialist
Rebecca Robinson Marine Lab Specialist
Don Sims Marine Lab Specialist (X-ray)
Lorraine Southey Marine Lab Specialist (Curatorial)
Joel Sparks Marine Lab Specialist (X-ray)
Nancy Smith Marine Lab Specialist (Curatorial)
Leg 167 drilled 52 holes at 13 sites and recovered over 7500 m of core. This is a new ODP core recovery record. Leg 167 officially began on April 20 in Acapulco, Mexico. Many of the technical staff boarded the ship 10 days earlier in Panama for the transit to Acapulco. The transit was mainly devoted to the development and testing of the data models for the JANUS database. Most of the TRACOR development staff, the JANUS Steering Committee, and the technical staff met daily to developed the data models. The ship arrived in Acapulco in the afternoon on 19 April, 1996. The crew arrived on the ship the morning of the 20 April, and the ship sailed that afternoon. Two Mexican observers also sailed from Acapulco. Transit to the first site off Northern Baja, Mexico, took 4 days. A port call in San Diego was scheduled on the morning of 7 May to unload over 200 boxes of core to alleviate the anticipated core storage problems in the refrigerators from the expected deluge of core. One of the Mexican observers was replaced by a second curatorial representative. The ship received a shipment of fresh fruits and vegetables, and left the afternoon of the same day for the 8-hr transit to the next site. The ship slowly worked its way up the coast, drilling 13sites. 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. The leg ended as the ship pulled into San Francisco on 16 June, 1996.
Core laboratory
During the transit, two people sailed from Oregon State University and installed the color reflectance track and system. The saws and drill presses were removed from the bench in the aft end of the core laboratory because they were not expected to be needed in the soft APC/XCB sediments. The color reflectance system was set up on this bench. Also, a digital imaging track and system was installed during the transit on the starboard bench in the core laboratory.
Core flow through the laboratory was intricate and choreographed. After the whole-round cores went through the MST track, the cores were split. The archive half of the core was scraped, run through the color reflectance system, the cryomagnetometer, and finally the digital imaging system before being described, photographed, and archived. Working halves were analyzed for velocity measurements before being sampled and finally packed away.
Paleomagnetism laboratory
There was very little time to spend on projects in the paleomagnetism laboratory. Fortunately all of the equipment worked well during the leg. About 1500 sections were run through the magnetometer. The Tensor orientation tool was run at every site, and it was run on two holes at Site 1020. This was also anticipated as the last leg for the current cryogenic magnetometer, which will be replaced at the end of the leg.
Chemistry laboratory
A total of 218 interstitial water samples were tested for salinity, alkalinity, pH, and major-element geochemistry. Headspace gas was measured for safety and pollution prevention purposes. A new method of taking vacutainer gas samples was successfully employed, using 50-ml syringes and small, three-way, stopcock valves. This method saves time, yields more sample volume, and allows more control of samples than previous methods. Lipids and high-molecular-weight hydrocarbons were extracted and measured. Large numbers of carbonate tests were run on the coulometer and CNS tests on the Carlo Erba elemental analyzer for inorganic and organic carbon. Total organic carbon, Tmax, S1, S2, and S3 were measured using the Rock-Eval.
X-ray laboratory
A total of 192 sediment samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). These were all simple bulk-mineral identifications in which no special preparation was required. Based on XRD results, 99% of all analyzed samples consisted of varying proportions of quartz, calcite, plagioclase, clays, and minor sulfide minerals. Dolomite, barite, and opal were occasionally identified. The X-ray fluorescence (XRF) unit was not used.