Weekly video report form the Joides Resolution during the PEAT Expedition 320 - May/June 2009

Introduction to PEAT Expedition 320

As surface waters of the Equatorial Pacific are swept westward by the trade winds, nutrient-rich waters rise up from below to replace them. Add a constant 12 hours of daily tropical sun, and the result is an equatorial belt of high productivity, like a soup of microscopic phytoplankton and tiny single-celled grazers at the bottom of the food chain. Over time, their skeletal remains rain down from the oceans, layer after layer, forming deep microfossil oozes in an sedimentary bulge on the equatorial seafloor basement rock.

Deep in the oceans beneath the influences of destructive forces, these oozes have archived Earth’s history for tens of millions of years. Fossil oozes and ocean sediments are the keys to paleoceanography, but how can scientists unlock their stories? THE JR and her Integrated Ocean Drilling Program sister ships are specially designed to sample the ocean’s microfossil record. During Expedition 320, 29 scientists and 25 technicians are working together to drill and study cores of ooze and sediment at five locations running northwest from just above the Equator. Expedition 321 will sample several more sites in the same transect. [Read More]

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