Quick Dips

Drilling Equipment Antarctica Bound

Equipment for the largest science project ever undertaken by the New Zealand Antarctic Programme, the $8 million Cape Roberts Project, is collecting on the ice some 200km north of Scott Base.

The project, which NZAP is running on behalf of scientific partners from Italy, the US, Germany, Britain and Australia, will recover rock cores 500 metres deep from below the sea floor off Cape Roberts in the Ross Sea.

All the equipment has been designed so that it can be towed on sledges out onto the sea ice next spring. Drilling will take place in October/November of 1996 and 1997 when the seasonal sea ice is thick and strong, though temperatures will be as low as -35^oC.

Some 35 drillers and scientists will work at the site. Studies will also be made in a laboratory at McMurdo Station and in the six countries participating in the project. A containerised base camp containing life support systems -- generators, a reverse osmosis water supply, cooking, ablutions and sleeping facilities -- was commissioned at the site earlier this summer.

The rock to be drilled is thought to have been formed from sediments deposited between 25 and 80 million years ago and lies in sea water 500 metres deep.

"It is a period we don't know much about, but knowing what was happening then is important for understanding climate change now," NZAP director Gillian Wratt says.

Microfossils and other characteristics of the core should enable scientists to discover if there were ice sheets on Antarctica causing fluctuations in world-wide sea levels before the last series of glaciations. They should also be able to date the rifting of the Gondwana supercontinent, helping to understand the formation of the Transantarctic Mountains and the Ross Sea.