44 



Mr. FuQUA. Our next witness is Sandra Toye, head of the Ocean- 

 ographic Centers and Facilities Section of the National Science 

 Foundation. She will discuss the international experience of scien- 

 tific ocean drilling programs of both the current Ocean Drilling 

 Program and its predecessor, the Deep Sea Drilling Project. 



Ms. Toye, we are pleased to have you with us. You may proceed. 



STATEMENT OF SANDRA D. TOYE, HEAD OF THE OCEANOGRAPH- 

 IC CENTERS AND FACILITIES SECTION, NATIONAL SCIENCE 

 FOUNDATION, WASHINGTON, DC 



Ms. Toye. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is a privilege to accept 

 the invitation to address the task force on the international experi- 

 ence of scientific ocean drilling. 



For nearly two decades, these programs have been at the fore- 

 front of international collaboration in basic research and therefore 

 may provide some models. 



In the interest of your time — and I think you are a bit behind 

 schedule — I will skip over all of the historical and descriptive mate- 

 rials and proceed directly to some of the conclusions, which I think 

 may be more at the heart of your interest. 



Mr. FuQUA. We will make your entire statement part of the 

 record. 



Ms. Toye. Very good. Thank you. 



Scientific ocean drilling became international and has stayed 

 international, I think, for five reasons. The first is that it is fore- 

 front science; the second, that it demands state-of-the-art technolo- 

 gy; third, it operates worldwide; the fourth, it is expensive — al- 

 though, I feel, rather modest after the preceding speaker — and, 

 fifth, that it requires large amounts, in fact enormous amounts, of 

 scientific manpower. 



The first condition of scientific excellence, I think, cannot be 

 overemphasized. The drilling program has been engaged from the 

 beginning in excellent and exciting science. It has been associated 

 closely with the entire plate tectonics revolution, which is itself one 

 of those occasional scientific events that provides an entirely new 

 and different way of looking at the secrets of nature. 



There is very little difference in the degree of excitement that 

 exists today in the current Ocean Drilling Program and that which 

 existed in the very new period of discovery at the very beginnings 

 of ocean drilling 15 years ago. Plate tectonics is still an infant sci- 

 ence, and it still commands the interest of the very best earth sci- 

 entists all over the world. 



The second condition, I think, is technological complexity. The 

 technological difficulty of finding and reentering a drill hole on the 

 ocean floor through 20,000 feet of water has been likened to thread- 

 ing a weighted string from the top of the Empire State Building 

 into the neck of a soda bottle sitting on the sidewalk below. 



Now, you add to that that you are doing this from a platform 

 that is heaving and being pushed by wind and waves, that you 

 have to get enough torque at the end of this long string to pene- 

 trate not only sediments but hard rock, the salts in the ocean base- 

 ment, and you have to do it gently enough to recover the samples 



