The International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) expedition was led by Co-Chief Scientists Professor Jody Webster (School of Geosciences, the University of Sydney, Australia) and Professor Christina Ravelo (Ocean Sciences Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, USA). The cores have now been opened, analyzed and sampled by the scientific team, following almost a month of intensive work at the University of Bremen during February 2024. Professor Hildegard Westphal from the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) and the University of Bremen was also actively involved in the on-shore phase of the IODP Expedition 389 “Hawaiian Drowned Reefs”.
The expedition aimed to recover a record of past climate and reef conditions off the coast of Hawai’i. During the offshore phase of the expedition a total of 426 meters of cores were recovered from below the seabed at water depths from 130 to 1240 meters. Corals store past environmental conditions in their skeletons. Researchers will use cutting-edge methods in their laboratories to extract information about sea level or climate changes from these tremendously important high-resolution archives. Looking back in Earth’s history will provide valuable insight into the mechanisms that cause climate change, including abrupt events, and into the impact of these changes on reef growth and health.
The Science Team of IODP Expedition 389 includes 31 scientists of different disciplines from Australia, Austria, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, India, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain and the USA, ten of whom sailed onboard the multipurpose vessel MMA Valour in September and October 2023 off the coast of Hawai’i, to collect the cores and data using a remotely operated coring system. After the offshore phase, the whole Science Team met at the IODP Bremen Core Repository, at MARUM – Center for Marine Environmental Sciences at the University of Bremen, Germany, in February 2024 to split, analyze and sample the cores and begin to interpret the data collected. The scientists will continue to work on samples and data over the next years in their home laboratories in depth to decipher detailed information from this unique new material and associated data.
The cores will be archived and made accessible for further scientific research by the international scientific community. After the one year-moratorium period following the onshore phase of the expedition material and data will become open access. Resulting findings will be published over the next months and years.
The expedition is conducted by the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) as part of the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP). IODP is a publicly-funded international marine research program supported by 21 countries, which explores Earth's history and dynamics recorded in seafloor sediments and rocks, and monitors sub-seafloor environments. Through multiple platforms – a feature unique to IODP – scientists sample the deep biosphere and sub-seafloor ocean, environmental change, processes and effects, and solid Earth cycles and dynamics.
The ECORD Science Operator has extensive experience working in sensitive ecosystems such as coral reefs, following seagoing expeditions to the Great Barrier Reef (Australia, 2010) and Tahiti (2005).
More Information:
About the expedition – https://www.ecord.org/expedition389/ About the research program – http://www.iodp.org/ About the European part of the program – https://www.ecord.org/ and Mission-Specific Platform expeditions - https://www.ecord.org/expeditions/msp/concept/ Frequently Asked Questions: https://www.expedition389.wordpress.com/2023/06/25/frequently-asked-questions/ Offshore Expedition Logbook: https://www.expedition389.wordpress.com
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