I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, a postdoctoral researcher in History of science and technology at MarE3, JAMSTEC (Yokosuka). Historians and oceanographic research centers rarely cross paths, so what am I doing here?
I joined JAMSTEC in April 2022 to document the history of scientific ocean drilling. I have been working closely with geoscientists from the start of my PhD research, as I was part of the European SALTGIANT ETN Project. While my colleagues explored the Mediterranean basin to understand the Messinian Salinity Crisis, I investigated their past: how did we come to know the seafloor? What technologies, discoveries, and collaborations shaped this knowledge?
It was then that I first encountered scientific ocean drilling. The huge scientific drillship and its ground-breaking, international science immediately sparked my fascination. Diving into archives, I traced the origins of these programs, went through the DSDP Initial Volumes, and thoroughly investigated the Glomar Challenger’s 1970s expeditions across the Mediterranean. Along the way, I learned about today’s IODP and Japan’s flagship drillship, Chikyu. I was fortunate to learn from scientists across the IODP community, who generously shared their knowledge and introduced me to others. Then, I started doing oral history interviews as a way to document my research.
As I delved deeper, I noticed a significant gap: there’s no collective and cohesive narrative of scientific ocean drilling, and the voices of those who shaped this history risk of being lost. Why not gather these stories while we still can? Why not craft a narrative based on their experiences? And why not use this lens to understand the history of Chikyu and Japan’s role in this scientific field? With the support of Nobu Eguchi at MarE3, along with Sanny Saito and Sean Toczko, we started to collect these stories, and created this repository.
A bit about my academic background: I began in the natural sciences, earning a Bachelor’s in Environmental Biology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona; then taking a detour into social sciences by completing a Master’s in the History of Science and Technology at the same university. In June 2022, I earned a PhD in the history of science and technology at Sorbonne University (Paris, France) with the thesis Making the Seafloor: French geologists, marine resources, and new deep territories (1945-1975), where I examined how the deep sea became a frontier of exploration and exploitation. I was part of the ERC-funded DEEPMED Project at the University of Seville for six months, where I began developing my forthcoming book, New Deep Territories: An Underwater Story of France, to be published by the University of Chicago Press in Spring 2026.
This oral history project has been made possible by the JAMSTEC Young Research Fellow 2023 postdoctoral position (April 2023 to March 2026).
Photo by Dick Peterse, IODP/JAMSTEC.