Ocean Drilling Program

Joides Resolution.

The ocean drilling program (ODP) was an international collaborative effort to explore and study seabed compositions and structures. The ODP, which began in 1985, was a direct successor to the highly successful Deep Sea Drilling Project initiated in 1968 by the US, and with international cooperation from Australia, Germany, France, Japan, UK, and the Ocean Perforated ESF Consortium (ECOD) including 12 other countries. The program used the Joides Resolution drill (JOIDES = Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling) in 110 expeditions (wells) to collect about 2,000 samples of the marine subsoil, one of the largest geological accidents in the world. The discoveries in the perforations allow new questions and hypotheses, like new disciplines in Earth sciences in the field of paleoceanography. In 2004, the ODP became the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP).

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