What, where and when?
The Cape Roberts Project is a joint venture by scientists and the national Antarctic Programmes of Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and James Cook University of Australia.
The aim is to recover and analyse cores from the sedimentary strata beneath the sea floor off Cape Roberts in the Ross Sea. The strata are over 1500m thick and represent parts of the time between 230 and more than 100 million years ago.
Cape Roberts Newsletter July 1994
The Cape Roberts Project is an outgrowth of a series of drill holes in western McMurdo Sound beginning with the Dry Valleys Drilling Project, a joint project of the United States, New Zealand and Japan from 1970-74. The last hole of the series, CIROS-1, drilled by the NZ Antarctic Programme, reached a depth of 702 m below the sea floor with 98% recovery, a considerable technical achievement.
Cape Roberts is in the southwest corner of the Ross Sea, about 125km north northwest of McMurdo Station (US) and Scott Base (NZ) and 250 km south of the German and Italian stations at Terra Nova Bay. Geologically, the strata to be drilled are located just within a major rift - the West Antarctic Rift System. They have also been close to the South Pole for the last 130 million years.
The sea floor off Cape Roberts is a good location for drilling because the strata recording old glacial and rifting events are at, or near the surface. Elsewhere they are deeply buried.
The Cape Roberts project began in 1994 with delivery of equipment to the site in the summers of 1994/95 and 1995/96. Drilling was postponed in spring of 1996 due to poor sea ice conditions but will start in 1997 and continue in the spring of 1998.
Use the following resources:
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LEARNZ BLM 1 Antarctic MapF
LEARNZ BLM 3 The story so farF
LEARNZ BLM 6 Cape Roberts TimetableF
LEARNZ BLM 21 Cape Roberts Glossary Pg 43http://www.icair.iac.org.nz/science/roberts/newsletter/