February 3, 2005

Boise State Scientists, Students Prepare for 41-Day Voyage as Part of Major NSF Grant

Please note: The BSU crew will be able to send e-mail via a satellite link at various points on their voyage, and plan to send dispatches back to Boise State about their experiences at sea. They also welcome questions from the public about the expedition. To submit questions online, go to http://news.boisestate.edu/oceanvoyage. BSU paleoceanographer Mitchell Lyle, left, graduate students Christopher Paul and Brandi Murphy, and BSU geophysicist Lee Liberty look at maps of the southernmost Pacific Ocean, where they’ll spend 41 days aboard the research ship Melville. click on the image above to see it full size A Boise State University team of scientists and graduate students will set sail Feb. 9 for a 41-day voyage to one of the most remote stretches of ocean on Earth as part of a major research grant awarded to BSU by the National Science Foundation.   Once they leave port in Tahiti aboard the research vessel Melville, they will likely encounter no other vessels as they traverse more than 1,000 miles of open seas in the southernmost reaches of the South Pacific.   “We’ll be in the latitudes nicknamed the ‘Roaring 40s’ and the ‘Screaming 50s,’ where there are no continents to block the wind,” said Mitchell Lyle, a paleoceanographer with Boise State’s Center for Geophysical Investigation of the Shallow Subsurface (CGISS) and co-chief scientist on the expedition. “We’ve picked the very best time of the year to be down there, but it’s still likely to get rough.”   Lyle will be joined by CGISS geophysicist Lee Liberty, Boise State geosciences graduate students Brandi Murphy and Christopher Paul, and students and researchers from University of Michigan, Texas A&M, Indiana University and Oregon State University. Boise State is the lead institution on the $318,211 grant from the NSF.   Their mission: to survey drill sites beneath the ocean floor for future studies of the very warm Eocene time period of 34-55 million years. Scientists are increasingly interested in understanding these ancient climate patterns because they offer insights into current climate conditions, including the effects of global warming.   The Melville, which is 279 feet long, will be tight quarters for the crew of about 45 over 41 long days. But there will be movies, e-mail access and activities to break up the monotony, and graduate students will also be doing some coursework as part of a deep sea field methods course. While open seas will stretch to the horizon, the crew will probably sight albatross, cape pigeons and perhaps some whales and dolphins along the way.    “This is an experience I can’t get anywhere else,” said Murphy, Post Falls, who plans to eventually   earn a Ph.D. that focuses on deep sea methane. “The opportunity is extremely valuable. “   Paul, from Eureka, Calif., will miss his youngest son’s 6th birthday by going to sea, “My wife is a BSU geosciences undergraduate, so she understands why it’s so important that I do this, but I know my family will be making sacrifices,” said Paul,  who would like to pursue a Ph.D.  in marine geology. “An experience like this is vital to my future career.”   Working around the clock, the crew aboard the Melville will conduct seismic reflection studies of the ocean floor subsurface using two separate methodologies, said Liberty, who will oversee data acquisition on the voyage. The studies will yield detailed information about the ocean floor topography and underlying sediment layers, which scientists can interpret to identify good sites for future expeditions to drill and recover a thousand or more feet of sediment.   Sediment cores obtained as part of the drilling expeditions are used by scientists to understand climate conditions that existed millions of years ago. By analyzing the fossilized remains of plankton and other organisms found in the samples, scientists can reconstruct a continuous record of the ancient climate conditions, including how fast and when the climate warmed or cooled.   The Melville crew will also analyze piston cores obtained from the first 60-80 feet of ocean subsurface to corroborate information obtained from the seismic studies. And for the first time, the seismic information will be acquired in digital rather than analog format, providing scientists with many more options for studying and manipulating the data. The research will be conducted in real time; when the crew disembarks from the Melville in Tahiti on March 21, they will have the charts and data in hand.   Lyle, a veteran of nearly 30 scientific ocean expeditions, said the upcoming voyage will provide the first-ever detailed survey of drilling sites in the southernmost Pacific. At present, scientists only have a rudimentary grasp of the topography of the ocean floor and subsurface on vast stretches of this remote region.    “These trips are a lot of work, but they can also be a lot of fun,” Lyle said, “You never know exactly what to expect.”   The BSU crew will be able to send e-mail via a satellite link at various points on their voyage, and plan to send dispatches back to Boise State about their experiences at sea. They also welcome questions from the public about the expedition. To submit questions online, go to http://news.boisestate.edu/oceanvoyage.   Contact (through Feb. 4): Mitch Lyle, CGISS, (208) 426-1167, mlyle@boisestate.edu                                                               Media Contact: Janelle Brown, News Services, (208) 426-1790, jbrown2@boisestate.edu