Over the past ten years of operation, ten sampling parties have been held in ODP repositories. Recently, with the scheduling of more high recovery legs, sampling parties have been requested more frequently. Each sampling party is unique and can be scheduled to meet a variety of goals, such as:
Organizing a sampling party begins early in the planning stage of a leg. These are requested by the co-chief scientists and specified in the cruise prospectus.
During the leg, composite depth splices are developed by the Shipboard Scientific Party. Sampling party intervals should be overlain onto the composite interval in a spreadsheet. This becomes the post-cruise sampling plan. The relative success of a sampling party relies on the Shipboard Scientific Party providing its post-cruise sampling plan well in advance so that curatorial staff can begin to prepare for the party ahead of time.
As of April 1996, five sampling parties have been scheduled thus far. Parties for Legs 167, 171C, and 172 were requested because of anticipated high recovery and the paleoceanographic leg objectives.
Leg 165 has planned two sampling parties, one in Bremen and the other in Texas, for May-June 1996.
The Leg 165 sampling party in Texas has two different objectives. The Cariaco Basin cores will be split, photographed, described, and sampled. High-resolution sampling is proposed to achieve an interannual to millenial-scale record of tropical climate variability preserved in the laminated sediments. Sampling of the Leg 165 K/T boundary cores were deferred to Texas to allow scientists time to analyze their shipboard samples and develop a sampling plan that will maximize scientific study for this critical boundary.
The objective of Leg 165 sampling party in Bremen is concerned with achieving high-resolution sampling of the Neogene sections.