The Ocean Drilling Program

The Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), an international program of scientific ocean drilling, is the successor program to the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP). ODP commenced its field operations with a shakedown and sea trials cruise in January 1985 in the Gulf of Mexico. Approximately every two months since that time, an internationally staffed expedition of our drilling research vessel the SEDCO/BP 471 (Fig. 1) or better known to the scientific community as the Joides Resolution has taken place in very remote but geologically important areas of the world’s oceans (Rabinowitz et al, 1984–1987).