Research Vessel Enroute to Bering Sea Climate Change Investigations
Pauses at Victoria, Canadian Researcher Joins Expedition
Montreal, July 7, 2009 — The Canadian Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP) welcomes the JOIDES Resolution at the ship's port call in Canada. From Victoria, the JOIDES Resolution, a newly equipped and modernized scientific ocean drilling vessel, embarks upon a marine research expedition involving scientists from 15 countries. The research team will investigate the role of the Bering Sea in climate change. Taoufik Radi, a Canadian paleontologist and researcher at Université du Québec à Montréal, is part of the scientific team led by co-chief scientists Christina Ravelo of University of California, Santa Cruz, and Kozo Takahashi of Kyushu University, Japan. During the upcoming investigation, Taoufik Radi will analyze microfossils to establish a preliminary history of the environmental conditions in the Bering Sea region.
During the port call, approximately 100 undergraduate oceanography students from both University of Victoria and Royal Roads University will come aboard to inspect the new laboratories, see how scientists work in the field, and learn about the inner workings of an actual research drillship.
IODP's Bering Sea Paleoceanography Expedition 323 intends to build upon data developed from the 2004 IODP Arctic Coring Expedition (ACEX), which drilled and collected sediment samples from the Lomonosov Ridge in the central Arctic Ocean. Since that investigation, the scientific community has anticipated the acquisition of new geological cores and data that address the age and effects of the Bering Strait gateway, which control the exchanges between the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, and thus play a major role on water mass characteristics and the migration of marine organisms. The Pacific and Arctic waters are totally distinct except for exchanges that occur across the narrow Bering Strait between Alaska and Siberia.
Planned drilling at eight targeted drill sites will allow penetration through sediments that scientists suspect date back through geological time to the Pliocene and possibly upper Miocene periods (approximately five million years ago). The drilling strategy is intended to help scientists capture important processes in the Bering Sea, including reconstruction of records related to sea-ice distribution and gradients.
Following an extensive modernization, the JOIDES Resolution returned to IODP operations in March 2009. Its first research investigation, the Pacific Equatorial Age Transect, was completed just prior to the ship's arrival in Victoria.
IODP is supported by two lead agencies: the U.S. National Science Foundation and Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology. Additional program support comes from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD, of which Canada is a member country), India's Ministry of Earth Science, the People's Republic of China (Ministry of Science and Technology), the Republic of Korea (Korea Institute of Geoscience and Mineral Resources), Australia and New Zealand (Australian-New Zealand IODP Consortium). IODP's principal areas of research are climate and environmental change, solid Earth processes, and the deep biosphere. The JOIDES Resolution is operated for IODP by the U.S. Implementing Organization (USIO) comprised of Texas A&M University, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.
For more information, contact:
Kathy Gillis, University of Victoria
kgillis@uvic.ca
Michael Riedel, Natural Resources Canada
Michael.Riedel@NRCan-RNCan.gc.ca
Anne de Vernal, IODP Canada
devernal.anne@uqam.ca
Hélène Gaonac'h, IODP Canada
gaonach.helene@uqam.ca
Taoufik Radi, science party member
radi.taoufik@courrier.uqam.ca
Gregg Schmidt, Consortium for Ocean Leadership (ship's operator)
gschmidt@oceanleadership.org
Cheryl Dybas, U.S. National Science Foundation (funding agency)
cdybas@nsf.gov
Nancy Light, IODP Management International (program management)
nlight@iodp.org
Source : Claire Bouchard, Press Relations Officer
Telephone : (514) 987-3000, ext. 2248
bouchard.claire@uqam.ca
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