Category: marine geology

Monday Geology Picture: Pillow Basalts in the Oman Ophiolite

Pillow basalts in Oman... with pencil for scale. Samail Ophiolite, January 2012.

I’m currently in Oman for a geology conference, so today’s geology picture is one I recently took here in the Samail Ophiolite. The picture shows some weathered and fractured pillow basalts with a pencil for scale. These are not the best-looking pillow basalts in the ophiolite. The freshest ones are found in the Geotimes sequence up in the northern part of the ophiolite whereas these weathered ones are the best ones you can observe close to Muscat, the capital city of Oman. I apologize that this picture is a bit dark. Unfortunately, we arrived at the pillow basalt outcrop just as darkness was falling. So, I took this picture using my camera flash. Still… spectacular, isn’t it? Seafloor pillow basalts on land, in the middle of the desert!

Why We Need Scientific Ocean Drilling

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced that they will fund only 6 months of scientific ocean drilling on the ship JOIDES Resolution in 2012. There is much need for scientific drilling, but NSF has been debating the expense of ocean drilling in the midst of budget cuts. There’s a chance that NSF may choose not to fund any scientific ocean drilling in the near future (The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program ends in 2013), but for now drilling is cut down to just half the year. Since most drilling expeditions take ~2 months, this means only ~3 drilling expeditions will be funded next year.

As a marine geologist, the cut-back of ocean drilling makes me very sad. Ocean drilling provides much valuable scientific information, much of which cannot be obtain except with drilling.

Why is scientific ocean drilling important? My PhD advisor Susan Humphris explains why in this recent EOS article “The Need for Scientific Ocean Drilling.”