Craig is temporarily a post-doctoral fellow at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute who is looking for a permanent position. He spends most of his time balancing his overwhelming geekdom with normalcy so he can function in the real world. Luckily his wife likes his geekiness.
Peter Etnoyer is a Graduate Research Associate at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies, Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. He studies deep corals and ocean fronts, and he loves to be on the water.
Kevin Zelnio is a Graduate Student Researcher at Penn State studying the ecology of hydrothermal vent and methane seep communities. He raises awareness of the plight of the spineless through folk music.
Way back in the day with deep sea drilling they used to just let it all flow out if you know what I mean. Now in the PC world and all, we have to watch what we spill, give rattail's fin about other critters, yadda yadda yadda. The japanese, being the ever inventful gadgeteers they are, have outfitted their newest and top of the line drill ship CHIKYU (japanese for "earth") with a Blow-Out Preventer (BOP) for just those uncomfortable circumstances when the pressure is a little higher than you expected that day.
"Further Blow Out Preventer (BOP) makes safe drilling even where there is unexpected high pressure flow of gas, oil or other formation fluids from the well."The before picture (left) shows traditional "riserless" drilling and the after picture (right) shows the riser drilling system equipped with Blow-Out Preventer.
The traditional, riserless method has the advantage that many holes can be drilled, but
"The disadvantages are corruption of the borehole wall due to seawater penetration[...]. Difficult to drill deeper than 2,000m below ocean floor, because of the hole cleaning and stability problems."So basically, while you can drill more holes and get around more, your limited in penetration and your hole gets mucked up more easily. You'll get that extra inch (500m) with riser drilling system that
"The long term borehole monitoring system observing crustal change is developed. In the future, earth observation network will be prepared by linking several observation boreholes by cables on the sea floor. It will contribute to our society such as disaster prevention."Now you can plug up your hole, keep track of its contents and avert a disaster to society all in one package. Gotta love those japanese!
Comments
Why cross out chics when you meant to say geologists? Some of us are both, you know.
Posted by: Karen | April 3, 2008 5:09 PM
I prefer to think of geologists as unisex ;p
Posted by: kevin z | April 3, 2008 6:35 PM