An ocean-drilling research programme that has been the most successful and productive global geosciences collaboration for decades will come to a stark end next year.
The US National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on 6 March that it would retire its flagship JOIDES Resolution drilling vessel rather than extend operations until 2028, as many researchers had hoped. It blamed the US$72 million annual expense of running the 44-year-old vessel.
The landscape of ocean-drilling research was due to change next year no matter what, because the International Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) — a 21-nation alliance that supports global expeditions to collect geological cores from the sea floor — will end on 30 September 2024. But many Earth scientists had been asking the NSF to keep the JOIDES Resolution operating for an extra four years, until its environmental certification runs out.
Critics say that the decision to retire the vessel will damage US leadership and international collaboration in scientific ocean drilling. “It’s a disaster for the ocean sciences in the US,” says Jamie Austin, a geophysicist at the University of Texas at Austin. The decision is “not unanticipated but nevertheless very disappointing — a big blow to the global community,” adds Henk Brinkhuis, a marine geologist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in Texel and chair of the IODP Forum, which coordinates the current ocean-drilling partners. Scientific ocean drilling has contributed to key Earth-science findings, such as the discovery of plate tectonics.
Uncertain future
The two other main partners in the IODP — a consortium of 14 European nations and Canada, known as ECORD, plus Japan — have agreed to work together without the United States after 2024, to advance scientific ocean drilling. ECORD hires a variety of vessels to perform specific ocean-drilling tasks, whereas Japan uses a large vessel named Chikyu.
Many researchers worry about the future of early-career scientists in the United States, who will not be able to work aboard the JOIDES Resolution after next year. Even if the NSF ultimately builds another ocean-drilling vessel to replace it, it would take at least a decade for a new vessel to begin working.
“We really can’t afford a gap,” says Mohammed Hashim, a geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, who led 207 other early-career scientists in writing a letter to ask the NSF to keep the JOIDES Resolution operating until 2028. “We cannot do what we do without a ship — we have to sail, we have to drill, we have to get cores so we can study them.”
Announcing the ship’s retirement, the NSF said that it “wants to ensure a sustainable future for the scientific ocean drilling community” and that it would engage with early-career scientists on what that might look like. It said that it intends to keep the funds freed up by retiring the JOIDES Resolution available for work in scientific ocean drilling, including studying existing cores.
But the end of the JOIDES Resolution “is going to be a lot of opportunities lost”, says Anthony Koppers, a marine geologist and senior adviser to the vice-president for research at Oregon State University in Corvallis. He chairs an alliance of leaders from 13 leading US oceanographic institutions that have been asking the NSF to continue operating the JOIDES Resolution. “We’re losing a Hubble-telescope-type capability that we had for five decades,” Koppers says.
Splitting the bill
The NSF says that its decision was based on the cost of running the JOIDES Resolution. One key area of dispute was the amount of funding being put in by ECORD. The JOIDES Resolution costs $72 million annually to run; the NSF pays $48 million each year to Texas A&M University in College Station to operate the vessel, as well as other costs to other institutions associated with scientific ocean drilling. ECORD contributes $7 million annually to JOIDES Resolution operations, and other funding partners contribute smaller amounts.
Last July, after being asked by the NSF, ECORD told the agency that it would not be able to contribute any more cash towards the rising costs of operating the vessel. The NSF cited flat funding from international partners in its 6 March decision, saying: “A new equitable model needs to be developed in partnership with the scientific community.”
“NSF will be engaging with our international partners in the coming months about future collaborative efforts,” says James McManus, the head of the agency’s ocean-sciences division. “NSF and the community need to continue to consider present and future science priorities and how we can best achieve those priorities leveraging available technology.”
One possibility is that after 2024, US researchers could work aboard ocean-drilling vessels hired by groups such as ECORD. “We will welcome collaboration with the US, whatever the level,” says Gilbert Camoin, director of the ECORD Managing Agency in Aix-en-Provence, France. Other nations that currently participate in IODP, such as China, Australia, New Zealand and India, must now decide whether to work with the ECORD–Japan alliance. China is also building its own scientific drilling vessel.
Final expeditions
For now, the IODP partners will push through their last six expeditions with the JOIDES Resolution. The vessel recently finished working near the Greek island of Santorini, exploring underwater volcanoes, and will make its final study in September 2024, on a palaeoclimate expedition north of Iceland. After that, it will go through a five-year period of being demobilized.
There could be some upsides to the NSF decision. Retiring the JOIDES Resolution in 2024 instead of 2028 should allow the NSF more time and focus to work out the future of its contributions to scientific ocean drilling, says Rick Murray, the vice-president for science and engineering at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and former head of ocean sciences at the NSF. “While I am saddened that there will be less science for these four years, I think the investment of those years has the potential to lead to a lot of terrific science,” he says.
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The body of Ugandan Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei — who died after being set on fire by her partner in Kenya — was received Friday by family and anti-femicide crusaders, ahead of her burial a day later.
Cheptegei’s family met with dozens of activists Friday who had marched to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital’s morgue in the western city of Eldoret while chanting anti-femicide slogans.
She is the fourth female athlete to have been killed by her partner in Kenya in yet another case of gender-based violence in recent years.
Viola Cheptoo, the founder of Tirop Angels – an organization that was formed in honor of athlete Agnes Tirop, who was stabbed to death in 2021, said stakeholders need to ensure this is the last death of an athlete due to gender-based violence.
“We are here to say that enough is enough, we are tired of burying our sisters due to GBV,” she said.
It was a somber mood at the morgue as athletes and family members viewed Cheptegei’s body which sustained 80% of burns after she was doused with gasoline by her partner Dickson Ndiema. Ndiema sustained 30% burns on his body and later succumbed.
Ndiema and Cheptegei were said to have quarreled over a piece of land that the athlete bought in Kenya, according to a report filed by the local chief.
Cheptegei competed in the women’s marathon at the Paris Olympics less than a month before the attack. She finished in 44th place.
Cheptegei’s father, Joseph, said that the body will make a brief stop at their home in the Endebess area before proceeding to Bukwo in eastern Uganda for a night vigil and burial on Saturday.
“We are in the final part of giving my daughter the last respect,” a visibly distraught Joseph said.
He told reporters last week that Ndiema was stalking and threatening Cheptegei and the family had informed police.
Four in 10 women or an estimated 41% of dating or married Kenyan women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by their current or most recent partner, according to the Kenya Demographic and Health Survey 2022.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — A rare Bronze-Era jar accidentally smashed by a 4-year-old visiting a museum was back on display Wednesday after restoration experts were able to carefully piece the artifact back together.
Last month, a family from northern Israel was visiting the museum when their youngest son tipped over the jar, which smashed into pieces.
Alex Geller, the boy’s father, said his son — the youngest of three — is exceptionally curious, and that the moment he heard the crash, “please let that not be my child” was the first thought that raced through his head.
The jar has been on display at the Hecht Museum in Haifa for 35 years. It was one of the only containers of its size and from that period still complete when it was discovered.
The Bronze Age jar is one of many artifacts exhibited out in the open, part of the Hecht Museum’s vision of letting visitors explore history without glass barriers, said Inbal Rivlin, the director of the museum, which is associated with Haifa University in northern Israel.
It was likely used to hold wine or oil, and dates back to between 2200 and 1500 B.C.
Rivlin and the museum decided to turn the moment, which captured international attention, into a teaching moment, inviting the Geller family back for a special visit and hands-on activity to illustrate the restoration process.
Rivlin added that the incident provided a welcome distraction from the ongoing war in Gaza. “Well, he’s just a kid. So I think that somehow it touches the heart of the people in Israel and around the world,“ said Rivlin.
Roee Shafir, a restoration expert at the museum, said the repairs would be fairly simple, as the pieces were from a single, complete jar. Archaeologists often face the more daunting task of sifting through piles of shards from multiple objects and trying to piece them together.
Experts used 3D technology, hi-resolution videos, and special glue to painstakingly reconstruct the large jar.
Less than two weeks after it broke, the jar went back on display at the museum. The gluing process left small hairline cracks, and a few pieces are missing, but the jar’s impressive size remains.
The only noticeable difference in the exhibit was a new sign reading “please don’t touch.”
VICTORIA – The British Columbia government is partnering with a bear welfare group to reduce the number of bears being euthanized in the province.
Nicholas Scapillati, executive director of Grizzly Bear Foundation, said Monday that it comes after months-long discussions with the province on how to protect bears, with the goal to give the animals a “better and second chance at life in the wild.”
Scapillati said what’s exciting about the project is that the government is open to working with outside experts and the public.
“So, they’ll be working through Indigenous knowledge and scientific understanding, bringing in the latest techniques and training expertise from leading experts,” he said in an interview.
B.C. government data show conservation officers destroyed 603 black bears and 23 grizzly bears in 2023, while 154 black bears were killed by officers in the first six months of this year.
Scapillati said the group will publish a report with recommendations by next spring, while an independent oversight committee will be set up to review all bear encounters with conservation officers to provide advice to the government.
Environment Minister George Heyman said in a statement that they are looking for new ways to ensure conservation officers “have the trust of the communities they serve,” and the panel will make recommendations to enhance officer training and improve policies.
Lesley Fox, with the wildlife protection group The Fur-Bearers, said they’ve been calling for such a committee for decades.
“This move demonstrates the government is listening,” said Fox. “I suspect, because of the impending election, their listening skills are potentially a little sharper than they normally are.”
Fox said the partnership came from “a place of long frustration” as provincial conservation officers kill more than 500 black bears every year on average, and the public is “no longer tolerating this kind of approach.”
“I think that the conservation officer service and the B.C. government are aware they need to change, and certainly the public has been asking for it,” said Fox.
Fox said there’s a lot of optimism about the new partnership, but, as with any government, there will likely be a lot of red tape to get through.
“I think speed is going to be important, whether or not the committee has the ability to make change and make change relatively quickly without having to study an issue to death, ” said Fox.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 9, 2024.
