Asahiko Taira (6 parts)

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is December 20 of 2023. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC, and today I am at JAMSTEC Tokyo office with Taira-san. Just to resume the conversation where we left it in late-August. We talked about your childhood in Sendai, the learnings while at the sailing club, you training in geology at the University of Dallas (Texas) and at the University of Sendai; when you moved back from the US in 1977, and when in Kochi University you started the study of the Shimanto belt accretionary complex, and you started to grow interested in Nankai trough. And then you went onboard your first expedition on the Glomar Challenger on the DSDP Leg 87.

Asahiko Taira (AT): That is right.

BMR: So, we can resume from the moment you moved to ORI (Ocean Research Institute).

AT: Yes, I moved in January 1985 to University of Tokyo, Ocean Research Institute (ORI), but I got onboard the Glomar Challenger in 1984, or 1983… My interest in marine geology had already grown in my field of research. At the same time, I think the Ocean Research Institute began looking for somebody who will be in charge of operating the IPOD, International Phase of Ocean Drilling (note: phase of DSDP, starting in 1975). IPOD was about to change to the Ocean Drilling Program, so they were looking for the person who could do some research and at the same time, do some administration in replacement of  Professor (Noriyuki) Nasu. Professor Nasu was a big figure in marine geology in Japan. And here (at ORI), he was everything… He organized ocean sciences, the building of the (oceanographic vessel) Hakuho Maru… You know, he was the founder of marine geology in Japan and he was about to retire, he retired after that. I think the Ocean Research Institute and the community had been looking for somebody to replace him. I was not known as a marine geologist because I had been a field geologist for most of the time, but because of my experience in IPOD, onboard the Glomar Challenger… When I found that the sand of Nankai Trought came from the Fujiyama, the mouth of Fujigawa, through a long traveling turbidity current, I think [that] that triggered some interest among the Japanese community, maybe to some extent of the international community. So I came to be known a little bit as a marine geologist. That may be the reason why the Ocean Research Institute spotted me as a replacement for Nasu.

But probably more importantly, there was a project called Kaiko Project. The Japan-France Kaiko Project, which started in 1984, concurrently to my experience in the Glomar Challenger at the DSDP. The Kaiko was… To me, it changed the entire Japanese geological community, in a broad sense. The Kaiko project had two phases. In the first one, in 1984, they brought the Jean Charcot, the French research vessel, and equipped it with the first not naval-use but for academy-use multibeam Narrow Beam Echo Sounder. That was the first time that academic marine geological research was done with a multibeam system. The Jean Charcot came to Japan to study the trench. The project was initiated by Xavier le Pichon, Professor le Pichon, and he consulted with (Noriyuki) Nasu-san whether the phase would be feasible, to bring this ship to Japan, and whether it would be accepted by Japan and supported by the Japanese scientific community. Of course, Nasu-san said, “yes.” He was instrumental in bringing some… Clearing some of the diplomatic reactions. Then, Nasu was succeeded by professors (Kazuo) Kobayashi, (Toshimichi) Iiyama… So, Nasu-san was already retired and he was not involved in academic operations, but Kobayashi-sensei and Iyama-sensei were in charge of the Japanese side, supporting the team. Somehow, because of my experience in the Glomar Challenger, I think, I became a member (of Kaiko Project). Apparently, I was the youngest member of these participants. It was really spectacular. It was the first time I have seen… Almost for everybody, [it was the first time] seeing a detailed bathymetric map in real time being recorded, just lying in front, in plain view. I think it was a six beam SeaBeam. It was really spectacular, to see that. I was so excited. At the same time, I think some of the community on board of the Jean Charcot, maybe 60, 70%, were land-based geologists, because there was no such a big population of marine geologists in Japan. They all became so fascinated by this instrument. After that… They also did a topographic survey, taking the single channel steamer cable simultaneously. So it was bathymetry and topography with single channel. It was a beautiful cross-section of geology; it was a very concentrated effort. I don’t think we have done anything like this in Japan. Although there was a marine geological community (in Japan) but not that way, concentrating in one area, from the Japan Trench to Nankai Trough, Sagami Bay, Suruga Bay… So the result was spectacular. Next year, the French brought the submersible Nautile. It was the first, I think – Alvin was American. It’s comparable to Alvin but it’s more capable, it could dive six kilometers deep. Xavier, professor le Pichon, brought it to Japan only after completing seven test dives in the Puerto Rico Trench. And that was it (laughs). Then it came immediately to the Japanese deep sea Trench, to survey it. So I thought, “that has to be adventurous.” I really wished to participate. Nautile is safer…

BMR: Did you dive?

AT: Yes.

BMR: How was the experience, your first experience?

AT: Well, I was invited to dive before that, previously, because of the training.  One year before I had a smaller diving experience in the Diving Soucer in Mediterranean Sea (note: the Diving Soucer was a submersible developed by Jacques Cousteau). It was exciting, but what I saw was nothing but wine bottles (laughs). The seafloor, full of wine bottles…

BMR: So at that time the seafloor was already polluted with…

AT: I think in offshore, the Cote d’Azur… I think it’s everywhere. But I dove there… It’s quite an experience. And then, in Nankai, we found this Calyptogena colony of bivalves in the deep seepage area.

BMR: (looking at photo above) Ah, here is Xavier le Pichon.

AT: (looking at the photo above) This is the people in charge of operations and some of the Nautile’s chiefs. And this is (Toshimichi) Iiyama-sensei (left) and myself.

BMR: And these are the bivalves that were discovered.

AT: It was the first time, around Japanese seep area, that this biological communities related to the seepage upwelling water were found in Nankai. But three dives later, or four, five dives later… There was a storm. So the Nautile went down in the morning and then the weather changed very quickly, and by the early afternoon there was a huge storm, huge wind and swells… They called the Nautile to ascend to the surface, but it can’t sort of be connected through the rope with the mother ship Nadir. They can’t bring it up. So the only thing they could do is, they tore the Nautile against the wind and wait for the weather to pass by. It was twenty hours. Three guys, two operators and one scientist, a geologist – he is also land-based geologist, he was a very good friend of us because he arrived some years earlier than Kaiko started. I think that the French had a grand kind of campaign, not just the marine geology survey, but they did some land geology also, so… He was there (onboard the Nautile) for twenty hours. I thought they all got fainted, you know (laughs). But after that, twenty hours later, the storm subsided. But still, it was quite a challenge, because the storm broke some of the guidelines. So they barely managed to bring the Nautile to the mother ship. The front part or the Nautile was all broken. The front part had a camera, thruster, sonar… All this front part, was all gone.

BMR: Because of the storm?

AT: Because of the storm, the huge waves, and so forth. So I thought that the project… There was still something like twenty more dives, but we had to go back to Shimizu, to the port in Shizuoka (note: prefecture in Japan). But astonishingly – I have so much respect for the French team – they fixed this submersible onboard the Nadir, at the port of Shimizu, bringing onboard parts from France.

BMR: Wow.

AT: Wow (laughs). Three weeks later, it was back to… it was operationally possible (to continue diving). So after that, they continued to dive for twenty more dives, or something like this, for two months.

BMR: Why this collaboration with France? And also, how do you think that the expedition influenced on the future of marine geosciences in Japan?

AT: The why is because there was Xavier le Pichon. Xavier… It was more like a personal idea, because he is the founder of plate tectonics. And to him, plate tectonics was formed at the seafloor spreading area, at mid-oceanic ridges, through mid-oceanic rifting processes. The subduction, collision… of plates takes place at the deep ocean. Nobody had ever really seen that in detail. So, for him, looking at the study of the trench was an essential part of plate tectonics, as it was becoming systematized as the geological or geoscientific (unifying) context. So it was his idea, bringing this Nautile. The area (of Japan) is surrounded by the trench, and all this people there (onboard), they got educated (laughs). Also, (in Japan there was) some tradition of land geology, so the region was well-known, like the Shimanto Belt (note: on-land equivalent to the Nankai Trough). And also the DSDP… The experience, supported (other projects). So the international acceptance could be much easier than to bring the Nautile to Peru, or Indonesia… There, it might not be easy to get government clearance. So the natural choice was Japan. It was a trench survey, and Nasu-sensei was there… (they were) good friends.

(Kaiko Project) changed the Japanese community enormously, because many people were involved, and even land geologists could get all the experience in marine geosciences. And also, there, there was no border between geology, geophysics, geochemistry, biology… So for them, the marine science really took a wider scope of sciences, which (have to) get involved to understand whole processes. So it was really… about mindsets being completely changed. But also, the essential idea of Kaiko project was related to Xavier’s idea of the subduction zone. All the geology, the formation of the accretionary complex, all the earthquakes… Have something to do with water descending within the tectonic plate. I think that it was not just for Xavier le Pichon, I think that many people had some kind of vague idea that there got to be water involved. How deep did it came from? What is a shallow part? How it is related to the entire geoscientific processes and even to biological process? It was totally unknown.

BMR: How using a submersible helps to understand that?

AT: The idea came from mapping… Not just that only one area, but the typical seepage-related biological community. Nautile was also instrumental in inserting the temperature sensor and measure the temperature gradient, the temperature anomaly in the surface around and inside the biological community. So at this area of the survey, we spotted how many biological communities were there and we, roughly… If you estimate that this much of a biological community can exist, they can also exist in these zones of Nankai [Trough], Sagami [Trough], Japan Trench… Which are about everywhere (surrounding Japan). And with the temperature difference, you can estimate how much water is coming against this biological community. So it may not be everything to represent, at least, but this much is upwelling. And turned out to be that this amount water, which sustains this biological community, was far larger than anybody had expected. So this abundant water… Its origin, still at that time, wasn’t known. Because it (the water) has already been biologically mediated, so the original chemistry is not regional. But at least, the water arriving to the surface was much, much larger than expected. This experience was directly related to the Nankai ODP Leg 130 experience, in which I was co-chief scientist. It took place five years later, or something like that. So this whole thing, Kaiko Project, was not just changing the Japanese community,  getting them it more into ocean sciences, in marine geology or marine geophysics. I think the importance for earthquakes and plate boundary, fault zone behavior… All these things had somehow to be related to the water contents, water behavior, water within the fault zone, and the migration of water. Where does it come from? Does it come from the Mantle? Does it come from nearby? So that was becoming the large-scale next target of the ODP and IODP.

BMR: Did you keep in touch with someone you met at Kaiko Project? Did you collaborate with someone who was later influential in your career?

AT: Yes. I continued to collaborate, of course, with Xavier. He was my mentor, in a sense, because I learned a lot from him. He invited me later to the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France) as a visiting professor and we worked together. He also became later one of the committee members of the Nankai Chikyu drilling, a higher-level committee. Although we had some different opinions, so we… Didn’t fight (laugh) but had different idea of how we should use Chikyu. But we’ve been collaborating, and his friends at his laboratory, Jean-Paul Cadet, Vincent Renard… All the young people at the time have continued to collaborate with us onboard the JOIDES Resolution, and we have done other projects together. So that continues, collaboration continued for the next twenty, thirty years.

After the Kaiko Project, the diving campaign was finished in 1985, and a new Kaiko Project took place in 1990. But by that time I was heavily involved with ODP because I became the Planning Committee member of ODP, and Kazuo Kobayashi became EXCOM member (Executive Committee). EXCOM is a more executive type of committee, you know? They made decisions. In the actual Planning Committee, apparently I was one of the youngest members… I think I started at age of thirty-nine, or something like this. One of my mandates… Not mandate, but the Japanese government and the national scientific committee expected to bring the JOIDES Resolution (the Glomar Challenger had changed to JOIDES Resolution), to bring the JOIDES Resolution in campaign to Japan, because to spend as much time as possible around the Japanese region would be beneficial for the Japanese geology. Of course there was not just that one purpose, but that was important. So we assembled all the Japanese proposals. I asked them (to the Japanese geosciences community) to write, write, write. Of course, the Kaiko data helped a lot. We had a bathymetry map, a SeaBeam, which were not that much available at that moment. So it was quite beneficial. And then we assembled something like fifteen proposals together in that kind of record, formbook, we called it… (gestures) thick this much. I will try to find it later. So the area was chosen by the committee and approved by ODP Planning Committee and then by EXCOM… Nankai Trough, because it has a bathymetry at the same time a spectacular seismic section, seismic reflection profiles; and Izu-Bonnin Arc, for which lots of petrological data is available. And then, the Japan Sea. There was more Kaiko Project being done in the Japan Sea, but the opening of the Japan Sea had a lot of debate, at that time. Specially regarding paleomagnetic data. There were several hypothesis to test how the Japan Sea opened, and also there was the idea that the Japan Sea margin gets new reformed… Initial subduction is taking place at the Japan Sea side, so that is a kind of an ideal site to test it.

So we had four ODP Legs: two Japan Sea Legs, Nankai (Trough) Leg, and Izu-Bonnin Leg with the JOIDES Resolution. And then, before that, we thought that having a very detailed seismic reflection profiling of Nankai will be quite beneficial, because we probably were looking for the fault zone, the decollement, which if some area had discharged water, it had to have a seismic signature of various water contents. Regarding the porosity and all these physical property of rocks, basically. So we’ve done collaboration with the University of Texas, Austin, Hawaii and Ocean Research Institute. We got a two-ship seismic experiment using the Fred Moore, U.T. Austin, and then Tansei Maru (shows photo). That was very successful, I think the velocity structure was very constrained, so we brought this very well constrained seismic figure to the depths, and this was ideal case for drilling JOIDES Resolution.

BMR: How did you bring together people from the University of Texas Austin, people from Hawaii, people from Japan…?

AT: This is a joint expedition. The money come from both Japanese side and the US side. The US side was founded by the National Science Foundation; our side, by Monbusho and the Ocean Research Institute. So the Tansei Maru is Ocean Research Institute’s ship, and the Fred Moore is from the University of Texas ship, that came together. So it was co-funded, we shared data. It was a very good case for the marine geology in Japan. The French program, also…. It’s shared, you know? Some of the operational money and we contributed to the operation, but all the data was shared. And this time is the same thing.

BMR: But was this a pre-site survey, organized by the JOIDES?

AT: No, I think… At that time the JOIDES, or the ocean drilling organization, had usually nothing to do with site surveys. Site survey had to be prepared by a different kind of money and then be submitted to the JOIDES Science Committee, and so forth. Writing a proposal and then (they) evaluate the science. But all preparation had to be done by our own effort. The NSF, for example, was doing a survey and eventually that data could be used for the JOIDES expeditions to get some coring done, which was beneficial for the proposal. If one piece of work is already done, but an additional piece work can be done by the JOIDES Resolution, that will eventually enlarge the science scope. So I think that, if you do some work and then this is useful for the JOIDES Resolution drilling plan, maybe… Higher points (laughs) were given to that kind of proposal. So it’s not organized by JOIDES organization but… it will be connected, in a sense.

BMR: That’s why I was asking, who organized this, who got in touch with the people from the University of Texas and from Hawaii, to do this joint survey?

AT: So, we are friends (laughs). All this important talk happens after the AGU (American Geosciences Union annual meeting), drinking in a bar, eating steak… So, “Greg, let’s do…”. And “let’s invite Jamie Austin,” and discussing… On beer… That kind of things. It always starts causal and then, of course, gets formal. A feasibility study being done, sending available data, studying feasibility… I sent two students to Texas and Greg Moore’s place (University of Hawaii). (Shin’ichi) Kuramoto-san went to Greg Moore’s place to learn seismic reflection studies, and so forth. So organizing the project  does not start through formal channels, it starts through casual channels (laughs). So after talk, after a conference, beer is crucial.

BMR: At that time you were starting your position at the Ocean Research Institute, at the University of Tokyo.  What were the things, the new skills, that you needed to learn to be in that position? What was the most important of being in that new position?

 AT: Well, everything (laughs). Of course, geology… being at Kochi University, as I said, I have very little money, doing fieldwork, with a hammer… At ORI, compared to Kochi, the budget was maybe of two-order, three-order of magnitude. And at the same time, marine geology was completely new to me. Although I’ve been trained… I’ve sort of done the things in marine geology that I had learned from the French Kaiko Project with Xavier le Pichon. But I had no skills (laugh). I was not a seismic reflection guy, I didn’t know how to read, analyze this seismic waves… And I had no skills to edit the SeaBeam bathymetric data into a colorful, nice bathymetric chart… But at the same time, geology is geology. And I could understand which could be important, how we are gonna attack this area in terms of tectonics, in terms of the fault’s geometry; and maybe inside there was water, and how we are gonna study it, the migration of water and so forth. So I could identify the important areas. At the same time, getting the sample it’s mainly geology. So after getting the sample I could do many, many things. But beforehand, in site survey, I had very little skills… The only thing I could do is to communicate with other geophysicists (laughs). I could design the whole thing, because of the things I had learned from the Kaiko Project. So I think the experience in the Kaiko Project became, to this young inexperienced, brought together all the different skills into one package.

So I became professor at ORI, yes. At that time they were building the new ship, the new Hakuho Maru. So I became professor in a very timely fashion. Kind of (in the) final phase… (Kazuo) Kobayashi-sensei was every day, every evening, until late evening from early morning, nothing but devoting his time to the construction of the new ship. He had an amazing energy… And then I got the idea that… If I’m a geologist, then I came as a geologist. And after (Noriyuki) Nasu-san was onboard this Hakuho Maru, the Hakuho Maru had already a SeaBeam, like the Jean Charcot (note: the French oceanographic vessel). And then, JAMSTEC was starting building the Shinkai 6500 (note: Japanese research manned submersible), so eventually it will be available. We got these new systems. But the tool which was now becoming the standard tool for the marine geology was bathymetry seismic profiling and diving. And then, eventually, the coring. But one piece which I’d really loved to have was the side-scan sonar. There was only one side-scan sonar which worked towed from the ship and produced large-scale coverage, and was available at the University of Hawaii. This was called SeaMARC 1 (note: Sea Mapping and Remote Characterization), which became SeaMARC 2. SeaMARC was about to be created. And… it was shown on an ODP Planning Committee, a beautiful image of the Izu-Bonin, Marina Trench. All the lava flows, and calderas… Some of the big landslides… Beautiful images which of course, in recent, you known, in the next ten years or so (they would become common). It was really spectacular device. After that, all the multibeam, reflection, backscattering reflection data, could be also collected by this multibeam device. So reflection and backscattering image could be gathered by the same multibeam echosounder. At that time there was not such a technology available. So they used them separately, mapping and at the same time gathering backscattering data. But SeaMARC had mapping and backscattering image at the same time. And also it has a deep tow-type. If you dove more into the deep area, you had far more high resolution images available. So, I thought, “this is my tool, oh my god, I have to get this one.” I didn’t have the skill to develop that thing. Therefore, in the last phase of construction of Hakuho Maru, I wrote a proposal to professor Kobayashi. “Look, Kobayashi-sensei. Yes, you hired me as professor at ORI, and within the next years this ship will be available, but I need… This… SeaMARC type… Side-scan sonar. With that, we could do the same thing as Kaiko Project and we can expand the area. But we need a new tool which can combine bathymetry, detailed bathymetry and backscattering image, trading, sampling, coring and of course gravity, magnetic and all these geophysical techniques. But geology, it is the foundation of any geophysical measurements. And then… this is it.” And Kobayashi-sensei said, “we don’t have this kind of budget. Ever” (laughs) “It’s already done.”

BMR: Was it very expensive?

AT: It was something like ten million to fifteen million dollar.

BR: That’s very expensive. (both laugh)

AT:But I didn’t give up. I thought, it got to be (a way)… I knew the people who were related, not directly to the construction, but the company people related to various parts of the ship’s construction. What kind of Hakuho Maru was being built, what kind of budget… I didn’t get into much detail on the budget but… Always, when building a ship, there is some money at the construction company for security, not to go bankrupt if something happens, or something like this. So I though, if this kind of money is available, I can somehow squeeze (the proposal) in the final moment. Convince Kobayashi-sensei, maybe waiting for the final moment of the final decision of this equipment we are going to buy, onboard the new Hakuho Maru… I thought, that was going to be two or three months later, at least, the time for the final decision. So at night I visited Kobayashi-sensei… “new proposal” (laughs). And then I started to talk to Don (Donald) Hussong,  from the University of Hawaii, marine geology geophysicist. He was inventor of this SeaMARC system, and a great engineer called Grant Blackinton. Blackinton is the guy who built this system. And then I started talking with him, he said… He was PCOM member, also. And he said, “Can be possible, to build one for ORI, in this time frame. Why not?”, type-of thing. So I got him convinced. Finally, I had a more detailed plan and some of the budget, and I said, “Kobayashi-sensei, look at this. This introduction will change whole world.” (laughs) So finally I think, it was great. Professor Kobayashi said, “yes, it could be done.” So it was built in Hawaii. I think it was Hawaii’s first large science and technology… innovating small business company. Its’ been published in the first page of the Hawaiian news, something like that. So Don Hussong made a company outside the University of Hawaii, produced and sold the instrument to Sumitomo company. Sumitomo was the Japanese representation and purchased, and provided the survey instrument to the ORI. That was quite a story. That was amazing. We mapped this one in [?], the Nankai Trough. Beautiful image. A very nice image of the mud volcanoes, and also the… Maybe the best one is the Toyama deep sea channel. So beautiful image. And the Izu-Bonin arc, which became part of a two-part survey, the Nanaki and the Izu-Bonin arc part, with the help of students. And the Japan Sea part was charted by the National Marine Guard for the purpose of the seafloor bathymetric map. At that time, the Marine Information Service part, the Department of the National Guard was studying the new subduction zone at the Japan Sea side, the deformation and deep sea channel… So it was used. And it was also used for the transpacific ocean floor cable survey, which brought very large income to the Ocean Research Institute. That was also good. And then… We then evolved to one system, called Izanagi. It is a name under the ancient god of Japanese myth. And the second one, deep one, provided by the same company, was called Watatsumi. It was successfully used for various seafloor mapping, and it was quite used for the first twenty years.

BMR: Now that you mention the Geological Survey, was there any relation between ORI and the Geological Survey of Japan in exploring natural resources in the seafloor?

AT: The Geological Survey in Japan is more related to the area of applied geology, the foundation being in using some data, even from construction companies… Using their data sets. Of course, it started being pure geological mapping, but their part became more or less routine… And also producing marine geological maps around Japan. That’s their task. We had some collaboration, but they have a more routine way of doing things. We more or less shared their routine measurements. They do coring and single channel seismics in one area, and they gradually covered larger areas… So their data would be very useful for us, for academic research. At the time, they were doing routine mapping. The data was useful for natural hazards’ mitigation processes. After that, many earthquakes took place in the active plate boundary, and we had a closer cooperation. At same time, natural resource as methane hydrate,s oil and gas… There, an organization called JOGMEC (Japan Oil, Gas and Metals National Corporation), they use our data and we can use their data and that of the Geological Survey. Some projects, like the extension of continental shelf from 200 nautical miles to 350 nautical miles… The Law of the Sea at the United Nations admitted the extension of continental shelf a hundred nautical miles if there’s natural prolongation of the topography. Now, “natural prolongation of the topography,” what does this mean? It’s… All this is a wording of the juristic application, not of scientists. It became a scientific discussion, and we collaborated with the Geological Survey, with JOCMEC and the Hydrographic Department of Marine Guard. But in their mandate, for example, publication is sometimes limited. We could not use their data for national security purposes. Maybe that’s the same in most countries, the same sort of restrictions… Also, for our graduate students, to get some job, it’s important to have collaborations… It’s always nice for them. (laughs) So we keep these diplomatic relations.

BMR: Before continuing, I’d like to ask you what kind of person was Kobayashi-sensei? Because of course he is a person that I cannot interview.

AT: Majime (note: serious, earnest, in Japanese). Majime, in Japanese. You know, in a way he is always… Not many jokes, for example. Not much laughing, no casual. He is always… In a sense, formality. And also his tone of voice is… unless he became really angry – I’ve seen twice or three times in my lifetime… (laugh) I made him quite angry once – steady state (of voice). But his decision, you see, if he gets convinced, I can trust him. If I convince him, he did things, very probably. So he never says very causally, “oh, let me do it.” He never kind of says a casual answer or reply… He was very cautious. But once he gets convinced,  he did things, very probably. I trusted him more than anybody else. So, majime… but if he smiles, he is quite charming (both laugh).

BMR: What kind of things did you learn from him? He was your superior at the ORI and also he was at ODP’s PCOM and EXCOM before you.

AT: Very strangely, we didn’t share tasks. Kobayashi sensei said, “Taira-san, your task is being at PCOM (the JOIDES Planning Committee), and do the things in the scientific community.” That’s it. So I didn’t say anything about the budget. He was in charge of the budget and also he was negotiating with Monkasho (note: Taira is referring to the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Japan, referred to as Monbusho, with the name used from 2001, Monkasho, accounting for Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) and so forth. That was his task. I didn’t say anything (about those tasks), and he wouldn’t say  anything, almost anything, to me. He let me do whatever I wanted to do. I was completely free, in that sense. He took all the burden, all the nitty-gritties of negotiating with the bureaucrats, and so forth. He kept me away from that kind of mess. That is probably the lesson I learned from him, so when I came to be in his position, I wanted to do the same thing, but… (laughs) maybe I had a little bit too much of saying something… Chikyu’s operation is so complex, that we needed collaboration with operations of Chikyu.

For the JOIDES Resolution’s case, its operation was done by the US; so regarding that part, essentially we (Japanese experts) had nothing to do. So his tasks (Kobayashi-sensei’s) were mainly related to the Japanese government, and also make a clear presence of the Japanese government, Monbusho and Ocean Research Institute in terms of budget and policy. That was his task. And my task was getting the JOIDES Resolution do the best science performance for the international community and at the same time get the maximum benefit for the Japanese scientific community. That was my task. But the best performance of the JOIDES Resolution as a ship, the drilling operations, etc. was the university of Texas A&M’s responsibility. So the three tasks were clearly separated.

BMR: What kind of things impressed you the most at PCOM when you arrived? What are your memories at that time?

AT: Good question (laughs). The Planning Committee made recommendations to the Executive Committee, and also made recommendations to the other committees which worked for us: the Tectonics Committee, the Downhole Logging Committee, Safety Committee, which was more independent; the Site Survey Committee… We made recommendations. So all the way… What I have learned is… In national, international committees, the way it works is that we discuss things, we make recommendations or some kind of formulated conclusion and then somebody writes, or the chairman asks someone to write. Somebody seconds, we vote, and if it’s unanimous, ‘unanimous’ is written. But… The Japanese way of how committees run… This international way of doing thigs, or at least in the JOIDES Committees, is very clear. We first make an agenda with things to discuss and then we approve the agenda. And for each agenda we discuss, we make some recommendations or discussions and then somebody formally proposes this, somebody else – the name is written – seconds, it got to be seconded, the name is written, and then the final vote. And things get closed. At the Japanese community or the Japanese way of discussing… Whether we have decided this one or not, is totally vague (laughs). Many times, we keep discussing the things again and again. And that is sometimes wasting time. So the way things get done at PCOM… If this is not totally decided, or even halfway decided, halfway decision, that is written. “This is halfway being done.” And then it is written and clearly becomes a meeting minutes. So writing meeting minutes and clearly stating the statements and recommendations, all the things… I learned a lot, from the way of doing things. In order to get accustomed (to that way of doing), for three meetings, I didn’t quite understand. So I learned a lot. But at the same time, there was always a dispute. To settle down, the chairman always said, “let’s make a break.” This timing is also important. “Let’s take a break.” So people start discussing, in this corner, at that corner… (laughs). If you discuss in a formal discussion, there are things which you cannot state in a  straightforward way. There was a national agenda behind you, or sometimes a community agenda behind you. Sometimes you cannot say, “this is for the sake of this, this is for this.” But if you discuss in an informal way, somebody can always bring up a resolution type-of thing. And then, I learned that there’s a large language barrier. For us, I can’t contribute to a discussion, to make the agenda, to make a recommendation, some of the closing remarks… I think this requires really native English skills (note: Taira is referring to writing down these elements for publication). So, to me,  80% (of these tasks) was going to the British representative (laughs). I think it is good, because he or she speaks better English than anybody else. So, it’s his role or her role… (laughs). These meetings were dominated by the American, half of the population (note: of representatives) were American – well, maybe one third. But probably, there was only one British representative. Maybe about 80% of the minutes were formally written by the British. I think it’s nice to have British people (laughs), they are very quick, save time.

So that kind of meeting procedure is interesting, at the same time discussing the things over the coffee break and sometimes over the beer, to bring up in the next morning, is important. But at the end, the good thing is that everybody has a common goal. You are not fighting for the national merit or structural geology or something like this; but of course everybody is thinking of doing the best science. This is why I have found myself being very comfortable in that kind of community, regardless that we have different ideas. I made old friends. I found the PCOM experience was one of the most entertaining, one of the most precious experience in my lifetime.

BMR: You just mentioned the (national) community agenda. How the scientific ocean drilling community in Japan was growing? And how did you witness that growth at the Ocean Research Institute?

AT: Two things. The international Kaiko Project was important and at the same time, this 1990 Japanese round of the JOIDES Resolution had a quite large impact. There were more students, young students, who could be onboard the JOIDES Resolution as a special recommendation. For example, in my laboratory, most of the students, even though their main topic was not related to the JOIDES Resolution drilling, or somehow in a way related, or even quite remotely related, I asked them to get the experience onboard the JOIDES Resolution because it is a first exposure to an international scientific team and you may learn a lot. At the same time you broaden your scope, and you get to spend two months in the same ship, you get acquainted more closely with other researchers and you become a friend for lifetime.

That kind of experience was spread out from conversations, not from us, but instead – if one student got a good experience, enjoyed the JOIDES Resolution very much, for example, then he could give some message or have a conversation with the other students, sometimes at Geological Society of Japan where they have some occasions to discuss. And I also asked everybody to write a report for the new, that group of the Japanese managing [?]. So casually it spread out fairly quickly. The experience of being onboard the JOIDES Resolution is very good.

Also, the involvement in the site survey cruises. Some of the cruises which related to the – the Hako Maru and Tansei Maru were the Ocean Research Institute’s ships, which had been used for the proposal base (note: to provide data to elaborate ocean drilling proposals). So now when they have an ODP related cruise, the students interested in marine geology, being onboard the geological survey ship, the Hakue Maru – I think they had a better way of treating the students, because they get paid—. So, they are allowed to use the data in other applications. Also, paleoceanography changed scope and also changed the community perspectives and widened the area of the… Oceanography, paleoceanography are close related, paleontology, closely related. So paleoceanography became one of the main fields of the ODP which also, in Japan – not only in Japan but also in every country – widened the community in a way that contributed to the future of the human society. What could be the climate, and so forth. With other large international interest and societal impact.

So I think is natural that not only the JOIDES Resolution, but at the same time the experience onboard of the ship was spread out, involving the new community that included paleoceanography. So I think, quickly… At the time I became a professor at the Ocean Research Institute, maybe if you do a seminar at ORI in marine geology, maybe fifty student altogether attended. But it quickly become 200-300, within three-four years. So it became… not very large, but a community large enough to make impact to the international presence.

BMR: And how did you come up with the idea of having a Japanese drillship?

AT: The idea was… The dream was… With the JOIDES Resolution in Nakai Trough, we got one hole penetrated to the basement; but the other upslope of leg 190 and leg 193… The upslope side was a total failure. You cannot, you just couldn’t drill almost anything. It was so fractured and so… In a way, lithified at some parts, unlithified at others… So heterogenous. And then, at the Japan Sea, one of many major targets could not be drilled because of the problem of gas. Although we carefully chose a site which had no potential large gas accumulation, the Safety Committee approved it, but if you start drilling and there’s a natural gas problem, methane… All this petroleum related, not just gas… So we couldn’t achieve almost anything on the initiation of the timing of the Japan Sea opening. And also, there were other topics… For studying earthquakes, we started discussing that we needed a ship with riser capability.

Discussion began something like… After this leg 190, we started discussing the Nankai Trough, which was quite a success, but we couldn’t drill the upslope side. And then, of course, there would be earthquakes in the future, so drilling into the earthquake generation zone could be important. And the importance first became clear by the event of the Kobe earthquake, which took place in 1995. At this time, 1995, there was already a discussion of the riser drillship planning and so forth; but whether the funding could come was still up in the air. The Geological Survey of Japan and the National Institute of Disaster Prevention, they have done the drilling in the fault zone. It was the first time that the fault zone, which had very recently generated an earthquake, right after that… The epicenter was fifty kilometers beneath the deep sea, so we could not go to the epicenter; but the surface rupture zone was so clear… So we knew this zone also by seismic imaging, in a depth of 1,5 kilometers. And they found evidence for the heating of the fault zone, how rock reaction with water took place, and then some of the feldspar was completely dissolved… Those kinds of things. For the first time, they found that active alter reactions took place in the fault zone, even in this particular shallow area. So fault zone drilling could be a very effective tool to understand the fault mechanics and fault behavior, even at the plate boundary.

In order to drill the fault zone in the Japanese subduction zone, Nankai is considered to be the only possible area, because the other areas are too deep and we have historical evidence available back to the 698 of earthquakes taking place every 200 years or so. For the last earthquake, Nankai earthquake, the upper limit of the rupture area in the subduction zone could be achieved by drilling five kilometers, from 2000m water depth. So there was maybe the chance to get to the five kilometer depth rupture zone and monitor it. That particular fault is considered to be the asperity zone (note: in seismology, point of contact between two blocks of rocks along the fault line) which generated the earthquake, and if you can really monitor it, we might be able to see some of very useful information for the prediction of the earthquake. Even in that case, monitoring the zone of this particular area will provide the real time information when an earthquake takes place. What kind of earthquake it is, and what kind of tsunami generates, and what kind of warning should be sent, can be immediately formulated.

So this, thirty years ago, was considered to be sort of the most important geoscience project in Japan. Getting a riser vessel, drilling into the fault zone, and at the same time it can go to the Earth’s Mantle and… But for the first initial target, Nankai asperity zone, 5 kilometers, plus borehole architecture – installing a borehole observatory and a cable network, I think that was, to me, [a] very convincing argument. I was one of the leader of this… I think the lesson learned from the JOIDES Resolution (the expeditions in Nankai Trough) and this idea of drilling the fault zone plate boundary by riser vessel, the initial Chikyu proposal… I think everybody, almost everybody said, “That’s it.” Even in the international community, of course, Jamie Austin (laughs).

BMR: Maybe we can talk about Chikyu and all this in the next conversation, because it is something that deserves its own conversation, but I was asking because I am aware that by that time you published some sort of recommendation, together with (Seiya) Ueda-sensei.

AT: Yes.

BMR: And it was almost at the same time that the expeditions in Nankai Trough were about to happen.

AT: Yes, right after this. I’ll try to find the documentation…

BMR: Do you want to talk about the ODP leg 131?

AT: Yes.

BMR: How came that you were co-chief?

AT: Because this was a proposal which I had written with as first author, and then, in the form of a book. This was the first Nankai proposal, not first but… First dedicated Nankai leg. Beforehand, the Nankai and Leg 97, half Nankai and half Japan Trench, happened. Leg 131 was a dedicated Nankai Trough leg, with this drillsite at the toll and a few more upslope. (showing picture). This was one where we got beautiful seismic profiles. Really. One of the best seismic profiles in ocean drilling history. Even though to me is still the best, beautiful image (laughs). This depth is well constrained for this expedition, by a two-ship seismic expedition.

Myself and the other co-chief was a guy from Lester University called Ian Hill, he had no experience on the JOIDES Resolution. I think it happened to be because I am a geologist and he is logging specialist. Of course, Greg (Moore) was here, and other people already had a seismic profiling, and then… Ian… Not much contribution. He is an English person, he was a great editor (laughs). It’s always nice to have a British person. So, simply… Two findings; well, three findings. We got complete penetration in a beautiful, beautiful fault. Look at this (shows picture). When you drill, you can really see repeating the same sequence. “Wow, this is fault zone, wow…”. This reflector is called decollement, it is all reversed fault being converted. This became clear deformation, or separation boundary. Here, above, everything is over-consolidated and underneath, there’s no deformation. And then, this is from the seismic characteristic and even tough drilling is overpressure. So there’s decoupling and the plate is moving.

Finding the decollement is a clear sign of decoupling. The stress boundary is one thing, and the big discussion comes – where does this water from the decollement come from? There were two schools (laughs). One school led by Miriam Kastner – maybe a single-person school. Miriam Kastner is a great geochemist. I respect her very, very much. But she was very aggressive. She came up with the idea that nobody else had thought about, and aggressively pushed her way of thinking. She thought that this water had to come from the deep area in the seismogenic zone. Even 30-40 kilometers, all the way down. Great. Great but, how it’s possible? Mike Ander and all my friends… Mike is also a good friend; said the idea that the water was produced locally, by compaction of the clay. Clay mineral is composed by layers, and in-between the clay layers there’s a sheet, and between the sheet there are water molecules. When you compact, this water molecules scape and become different kind of mineral. It’s [?] or smectite, the same clay mineral. They contain lot of water. But halite contains less. So there got to be some change, and change takes place at 60-70 degrees; that is about temperature of the zone, so it’s natural to think there’s compaction and the water is disseminated, it escapes from the clay mineral. Naturally one place became water rich, and the water rich zone started to flow to the spreading zone, to the subduction zone, and produced the decollement. So the entire package is approaching to the trench. And then there’s a… We called it a backstock arc basement. Then, the zone there has already started compacting, the temperature reaches some 70 degrees underneath and the clay releases the water, naturally migrating upper wards. The zone above becomes a water rich zone. And then the no-compaction, dewatering zone, is the zone over here. This zone is weak, therefore starts sliding. And this portion is going down.

That was the idea I kind of favor. But the way Miriam said… Is… Some large potential hope was related to the occurrence of minor earthquakes. This is the one which is maybe affected, maybe useful explanation to produce initially this kind of formation. But it has to go deep. And in deep, this kind of process is over. Then, what generates earthquake is… For earthquake to generate, one plate got to be coupled, once again. This is an initial decoupling zone, this it got to be deep decoupling zone, then this deep decoupling zone has to be decoupled by some event. Something has to decouple, triggering the fracturing of the whole thing. So this kind of discussion is what [?] visible, geochemically. So not clay minerals… so it takes place everywhere. But the importance is deep sea-deep water. I think this discussion is not completed yet, but again this water effective geological, some get migrated in the fault zone. And then get this Calyptogena colony, you see… all this regionally not smooth homogeneous upwelling water, but some zone gets more water being conduits, and then produce Calyptogena colonies and so forth. The whole thing started as Nankai, but yet it got to be interesting.

BMR: It was truly a multidisciplinary study on Nankai.

AT: Exactly. So I expected something… “This could be a very interesting zone to monitor water.” So I came up with this idea of ONDO, Nankai Downhole Observatory Experiment, Leg 131.

BMR: What’s the meaning of ONDO?

AT: ONDO is ODP Nankai Downhole Observatory, and ondo also means temperature in Japanese.

BMR: Ah.

AT: So, in the decollement I… Brought this string, which has a data package and a temperature sensor here. And a pressure gauge and acoustic transmission, and then we put this into this 808 borehole.

BMR: Was it the same hole?

AT: Same, same.

BMR: How did you manage to acquire this technology, the ONDO sensor?

AT: Temperature sensor was already available. But the rest of them were very new. Even installing the borehole temperature observatory was the first time ever done. Later, Keir Becker, and then… But this was the first trial. I think Keir was right. Keir, I think he said, “this is too sophisticated.” Too much (laughs). Specially, he was right that this ONDO project was… I needed to be more cautious in designing it and everything. But I was too much… I don’t know.

BMR: In which sense do you say that?

AT: (Laughs). I don’t know. You know… how to say. I was overexcited, in a sense, about the idea of monitoring the decollement, because I knew that it got to be, you know, because of the experience in Kaiko in the decollement, and before that, the seismic reflection survey, the reverse reflection – reverse refection is, if you have acoustic impedance, for example water and rock, is normal. So if you got consolidation going on, everything underneath from here has a larger density. If in the middle there’s a zone of water, rock water situation, which is a completely different water. So a reversal of the  refraction of the seismic wave takes place. So this reversal is easy to be detected by acquisition. So this, here normally is white and black, but here it is black and white; but here, it is black and white and the other way around. So I knew there got to be some funny zone, strange zone. And then, that could be the conduit of the water. It’s moving, water saturated is not moving, and the confined water, we don’t know yet. But if we can drill, and see the hydraulic status of this zone, we can bring some new perspective of the entire water movement in this zone.

So I prepared this beforehand. Before this leg I sent one engineer to the Texas AM University. He stayed there about one year to prepare this design with Texas AM engineers together, and he learned how to operate it. We kind of brainstormed many, many times, and there I had already one guy who had been sent to Texas AM as a marine staff scientists. He was the engineer who would be onboard the JOIDES Resolution, and do laboratory maintenance, and so forth. And he became a technical staff. So we had three technical staff, plus two guys from cable company, onboard for this project. Submarine cable is telecommunication. This technology was the same thing, (shows picture) and this instrument here is acoustic transmission of data. That was a bit too much. This was the beginning of the mistake. So the idea is, if you install it, you come with the ship occasionally, send acoustic signal, you recover the data, regularly, and… So, there’s no need for using a submersible or the some ROV to approach, to the extract data from this particular instrumentation; because going down takes time, it’s dangerous… So sending an acoustic signal could be much better way to do it. But. Problem was, in this design, from this landing to the housing of batteries, and so forth. And here (shows picture) is connected to the long tubing, stainless tube. Inside there is the cable, and then above the borehole there’s the acoustic transponder.  And… Problem was, that was in the middle of mainstream Kuroshio current.

We prepared this about one year beforehand, the design and personnel training, and then the discussions with ODP-Texas AM engineer on how to operate it, how to install it. We expected some Kuroshio current, but apparently I underestimated the effects of the Kuroshio current on the installation of this particular instrument. It got to be carefully designed to withstand all vibrations of the pipe. So the Kuroshio, because of the [?] which creates at the downstream side of the pipe, the pipe shakes, sometimes over one meter of amplitude.  So you can see, if you start dropping… (makes sounds, laughs). So originally, we monitored through this acoustic transmission on the top of the pipe. And at the first trial, within something like 30 seconds, it was gone (laughs). Some of the parts were gone, even the bolts and nuts, they were taken up. Wow… Then we repaired it, we got some groose, and we got some extra reinforcement, and tried four times. Finally it seemed repaired, but apparently – we had a length of rope, and then we know how long is this cable. And there’s an amount (of rope onboard), so we could see the length of the cable, but this much had to go. Something like 200 meters, short. Apparently it (the instrument) was stuck. Something we have, about, from here (shows picture) there’s the decollement… We wanted to go something like this depth, at the end. At 200 meters there’s something, it got stuck somewhere in here. So that means… we got temperature sensor in the borehole… Apparently, the whole wall collapsed. The whole borehole had collapsed, completely. So we tried to go through with… with different methods, couldn’t do it. Time is… So we got complete success of this particular hole, 808, so half of the… But one month of ship-time was used and then… Shipboard party was happy describing this one. And then ONDO installation started in the second half. It was initially estimated to be completed in about one week, and then you have two weeks more, or close to three weeks more. There were a few options, and some people had some interest in stress measurement device. Some have idea to go upslope to get extra holes. There were some options which could be discussed onboard. But ONDO operation continued, extended… because of this is co-chiefs main targets. But (laughs) we got three plus (laughs), … and I was half-given up. So about three weeks, and almost about one week left for the Leg, I said, “I give up.” And the reason I gave up is because I was able to negotiate ten days  in next Leg, because next leg was instrumentation leg, was to testing a new type of drilling technology. First time drilling mining, small diameter first slip speed mining… the ore. The… (?) which had never been used, but could maybe be useful for some hydrothermal water deposit, and that kind of thing. I was asked TAMU that I needed 10 days to complete ONDO. Lucky they accepted. So, I said, “let’s use…”. By that time, there’s a whiteboard (onboard), and many writings: “too much ONDO!,” “again ONDO!”, (laughs), ONDO, ONDO, ONDO! (Laughs.) There was huge frustration building up. So I called a meeting, that I gave up ONDO project. (claps) Then, I decided to do something for the sake of the people who brought the new instrument, and so forth. Anyway. So another experience, where I learned that downhole observatory is not easy. Especially in Kuroshio current. There’s a huge challenge. So I underestimated the effect and also the borehole, if you leave it open, it will collapse. So you got to do it very quicky. We knew that. Simple principle. Anyone who got the experience in ocean drilling knows that. So that was a story of Leg 131. (shows picture) There’s my birthday, in the second half; but I learned the experience. And later, about twenty years, more than twenty years later… same kind of ONDO instrument  was installed on Japan Trench for the earthquake, after March 11. So it was, to me something, something…. Being… following me! (Laughs). I might not call that… but anyway, that’s it. That was leg 131.

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is March 26 of 2024. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC, and today I’m in JAMSTEC Tokyo Office with Taira-san, Asahiko Taira. Thank you very much. So this is our third interview, the last one was in late-December (2023). In the last interview, we talked about the period from the late-1980s, when you move to the University of Tokyo, Ocean Research Institute. We talked about the growing of the geoscientists’ community in Japan and the Kaiko Project, the ODP leg 131, ONDO Project… We also talked about your participation in the ODP Planning Committee, international relations…

Asahiko Taira (AT): Yes.

BMR: And we decided that this talk was going to be focused on Chikyu, from the planning phase to the construction and first expeditions. So of course, the first question is, how the idea of having a scientific drillship for Japan came up?

AT: (laughs) Since you asked the question (in our previous meeting) of who initiated, where is the origin of the idea of the construction of Chikyu, where does it come from… It’s a little bit difficult to go back to the history and dig out some of the early documents. But one document was published in 1986, or something like this, from the Ministry of Science and Technology. There, there was a fairly large gathering of opinions related to future aspects of Earth Science. So not just [scientific] ocean drilling, there were many, many aspects of the Earth sciences, including atmospheric science and some bio-related biochemistry, geochemistry, earthquake [research] and mitigation of disasters… One topic included is ocean drilling plus continental drilling projects. And of course, all the base of the Earth… the large lithosphere, plate-wide observation, behavior of plate tectonics… I hadn’t seen that document for many years, (laughs) but I remembered that I had contributed a part. Fortunately, (Nobu) Eguchi-san was able to contact the (JAMSTEC) librarian and found this very thick, something like 400 pages document. It took about a month to scan the whole thing (laughs). And then I finally had a chance to take a look at this documentation, which is supposed to be one of the starting points of the idea, formally presented to the public and to the Government. So it is a report assembled by the Science and Technology Agency. There, I found two reports. One is written by (Noriyuki) Nasu-sensei and the other one is written by me with (Seiya) Ueda-sensei, the late Seiya Ueda – Nasu-sensei also died several years ago. So the other article was [co-authored by] Ueda and me. I took a look at this articles or reports, and I had almost completely forgotten about the exact content, but I vaguely remembered what I’ve written. The thing that became clear to me is – my report was saying three things. Essentially, a huge a dream, [we] have to go to the Mantle. So you’ve got to initiate a Mohole Project. Then, study the paleo-environment, paleo-climatology, and then… Borehole observatories are important. So in this document, the scientific goals are written rather clearly, and I think we followed pretty much this line, of deep boreholes to the Mantle… which [we] haven’t completed yet. But the borehole observatory [research] has been quite successful in the Japanese community, and environmental studies have been widespread globally.

On the other hand, Nasu-sensei’s article… His article is clearly focusing on the ship itself, on the platform. So he is discussing what kind of platform will be required for the future of scientific drilling. His focus on what this ship is going to do is not so clear, but he stated that innovation was… Maybe a refurbishment, or maybe something else, but a new platform has to be built by the Japanese community. In that sense, to me, both [proposals] merged together. Deep boreholes into the Mantle required some new ship, and what Nasu-san said, it can be achieved by… The main science target could be both, a Mantle target and borehole research targets. So, I think, with the two reports combined together – scientific goals are laid out, and in order to approach to these scientific goals, Nasu-san’s approach, building the ship. He also emphasizes that the ship has to be built by the Japanese community or the Japanese Government. So, the idea that we required a new platform for scientific purposes was laid out by me and Ueda-sensei; but the statement that it has to be built by Japanese community, and for the sake of the Japanese science and technology, it was stated by Nasu-sensei. So I think that, if I’m asked who really said the idea of Chikyu, I think it’s Nasu-sensei who did it. I vaguely stated some of the more scientific [goals], but in this particular report, Nasu-san clearly says that deep drilling capability has to be achieved by a Japanese ship, which is designed by the Japanese community.

BMR: At that point, Nasu-sensei was not anymore in the University of Tokyo.

AT: Nasu-sensei has retired already, at that point. He was deeply involved with some of the science planning in the Science and Technology Agency, and he was in some committees of the JAMSTEC’s planning. He was more deeply involved with the future planning of the JAMSTEC. So he was in the right time in the right place, and so he was quite instrumental in promoting… Of course, he was a big boss (laughs) at that time, already. He had been the initiator of deep sea drilling in Japan and also he had been the director of the Ocean Research Institute, and therefore I think he was much more influential than a young fellow who just came from Kochi University (laughs), who just became a Professor at the Ocean Research Institute. But… It was Nasu-sensei’s idea, and Ueda-sensei was a pretty famous geophysicist. Therefore, Ueda-sensei writing together with me was quite influential for the community, I guess.

BMR: Exactly, that’s what I was thinking about. So you wrote a proposal in that report which includes many different proposals for the Earth sciences to implement in Japan, right? And several of them mentioned in one way or another the interest of having the scientific ocean drilling ship. What I would like to know is, how this idea came up between Ueda-sensei and you? How did you agree or how did you found the need to state this as a future for Japanese sciences?

AT: You know, plate tectonics [theory] came late in Japan, to be accepted, because of the community’s peculiar interest in the geology… I should say that the scientific community was divided in pro-plate tectonics geophysicist, and anti-plate tectonics geologists. It happened in many countries in that way, because geology is often too much region-related. They have a lesser global perspective, and also it is very difficult for them to have a global perspective because they’ve been mapping their own local area for their own interest. Mapping the local area is quite important for the benefit of the community – where the [hot] springs are, where the mines are, where the landslides, where mitigation should be done, and so forth. So geology in Japan, especially because of the natural hazards and of course, the hot springs – geology is quite important for finding hotspots, spa and onsen (laughs). So geologists were very slow accepting plate tectonics [theory]. I was among one of them, the few sort of frontier, who got interested in plate tectonics and studied the geology of Japan in terms of plate tectonics. Then, I think there was a community feeling, even among the geologists, that we were far behind the overseas advancements of the plate tectonics-related research, especially because Japan is where plate subduction is taking place. The area is the most active, in terms of plate tectonics. Therefore, the importance of geophysics, seismology, heat flow, and also volcanoes… but all volcanoes and earthquakes are [in turn] related to geology itself. So Quaternary, crustal uplift, origin of [?]… all these things are closely related to geology, and therefore, I think that the community was feeling that we had to do something. Otherwise, the distance between the forefront ideas and, the observations being done outside Japan, and we, we are getting behind and behind. At that time the Kaiko Project had already taken place. The French had brought the submersible and we got the feeling that we had to be involved. And therefore, I think that the Science and Technology Agency took the leadership to get together for [tracing] the future plans, through community wide [feedback]. I think that that report is great. Reading it… I think that many nice things were written, from a wide variety [of perspectives]. And of course, as you said, the same scientific ocean drilling was there like the backbone, which put together all these different interest into one single project. It was obvious. So, I think that we needed something, a large Earth Science project, in order to come back to the table activity, not just enjoying something given by the Western community. More than that, we should provide our ideas, our technology, sometimes our industrial capability, to take leadership to some extent, to come back to Earth Science frontier. And then take the leadership; a global leadership was going to be important, in the Japanese community. I think that was the reason… And in combination, the Science and Technology Agency… that was in 1986-87, in the middle of the so-called bubble economy in Japan (laughs). Japan’s economy was getting bigger, bigger, you know, and we felt that we were becoming the economic giants globally. So we got the feeling that we would be able to do many things. And then, thirdly, I think that earthquake mitigation was becoming an important thing for the future. I think that the whole set of science and technology leadership, public economy, and earthquakes, put together, we [believed that] we could take leadership in Earth Sciences, and especially in scientific ocean drilling. I can recall it in that way. (laughs)

BMR: So how did you experience the later discussions and negotiations up to the approval of the drillship’s construction?

AT: There were a series of important steps. One is that Nasu-sensei had, within JAMSTEC, a committee for studying and building Chikyu. The riser-capability was not clearly written. [About the type of] riser, at the beginning, there were many discussions. Slim-line riser, riserless mud circulation… All this new technology was being considered; they were on the table. But I was not directly involved with Nasu-san’s committee. Instead, I was studying within the Ocean Research Institute. And then… I will let you read this “New Mohole Project memorandum” (shows me a document). I also contacted with Mitsui Shipbuilding Company. And Mitsui Shipbuilding, in 1988 or something like this, provided us this report (shows report). I’ve just found it out by removing my office, digging out some old files. So two things, I was more pursuing a Mohole-type project, and consulting with them what should we do to prepare it, and how can we approach to the international community, at that time the ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) community. And within JAMSTEC-STA’s side, Nasu-san took the leadership internally, solidifying the opinion within JAMSTEC and [other] communities. So I think that Nasu-san had a much larger role, the budget proposal… But I was successful enough to provide information to the international community, that if something was organized, we could quickly move this Japanese project into the international community. Mitsui was initially very active in this shipbuilding proposal, and they had been searching what kind of ship should it be. I think that they were far ahead of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industry Company, which [eventually] became the main shipbuilder. Mitsui was in a subcontract under Mitsubishi. Because Mitsui was the builder of the SEDCO [drill]ship, which was a sister ship of the (scientific drillship) JOIDES Resolution. So, Mitsui was more experienced in drillships, drilling and building them, than Mitsubishi, so it was natural for me that I approached Mitsui. The Mitsui report is here. I will give it to you, you can take a look at it.

BMR: Thank you very much. These are very valuable documents. Now that we mention the shipbuilders, and Mitsui recommending the riser drilling, we can maybe talk about the relationship of Chikyu with offshore industries when it was initially planned. I’m aware that at that time, there were some discussions on methane hydrates around the Pacific and around Japan, in deep waters. So I would like to know what kind of relation, if there was a relation, did you see between those industries and the decision to build Chikyu?

AT: To discuss this point, one [thing] is shipbuilding itself and [the other is] operation of the ship. And both require some of the [offshore] industries. So about building a ship, I don’t know much about why Mitsubishi built the main part, only the hull part, and the body part was built by Mitsui. So first, the keel was laid out in Mitsui Tamano Station (Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding Co., Ltd, Tamano, Okayama, Japan), and later the upper structure was built by Mitsubishi.

Then, there was a discussion on what should be the size of the ship. The two main ideas, I think, had been discussed at Nasu-san’s committee. After JAMSTEC got the first Chikyu budget in 1992, I think, the feasibility study budget of 1992. Around 1992, there was a discussion of who was going to build the ship, what kind of ship should be, its specifications… One idea was that JAMSTEC was going to design and develop a very large part of this ship with some unique features, a more slim-line riser type of ship. Relatively small, but more specialized into the scientific drilling. And the other side was – that was going to be very difficult. Regardless of how much precise site survey you do, encountering a hydrocarbon-charged formation, a gas explosion can cause a huge disaster. So [the scientific drillship] had to meet the standards of oil and gas companies. So, eventually, it was suggested to use existing pipes and riser systems, which had already been tested in oil fields and verified by certain inspection organization. These should be brought together, fitting them in an appropriate way to be effective for scientific ocean drilling. So I think that initially JAMSTEC’s idea of a specific vessel was [aimed at] how to get support within JAMSTEC, because JAMSTEC is supposed to develop new science and new technology. So it’s not [about] simply buying something from the shelf, put it together and give it to the scientists. That’s something they didn’t want to do. Also there might be something to learn, a lesson or something, accumulated from building a ship, that would be minimum, if you buy everything. But on the other hand, the problem was, who was going to operate this kind of ship? If it is a Japanese drillship, you have to train all the ship crew from the beginning. It’s like Shinkai 6500 (note: JAMSTEC’s manned submersible, completed in 1990). It took about five years, even a simple ship – not simple, but… To be really safe, to comply with the operation standards, it took five to seven years. And having that kind of experience at JAMSTEC, there was a strong voice against developing in JAMSTEC a research drilling vessel. So they did some preliminary study and costs estimates, called feasibility [study]. They came [out with] some funny, a little bit [?], of buying some parts from commercial [companies], some parts built by JAMSTEC… But even then, I think [they] finally came to the conclusion that the risk of [developing] your own vessel was that JAMSTEC had no idea in drilling into hydrocarbons. So, I think they finally decided to accept the idea of introducing industry technology into the drillship. Even though they had the idea [of having] a smaller riser pipe, and it had to be a small ship – that was more appropriate, because [otherwise] the cost of operations could be large, and at that time the idea of how much the operation would cost was not yet clearly defined.

So, at that stage of 1992, the feasibility study budget was given to JAMSTEC operator, was kind of [discussed] among the committee and then at the committee actually moved, they hired part-time [personnel] from the Japan Drilling Company, JDC. And after JDC became involved with the operation team, [they said,] “we cannot operate this ship, because this ship standard is too weak for hydrocarbon formations”.

BMR: What does it mean, too weak?

AT: Too weak in many ways… The ship had to be designed in a very special way… [It had to have] various anti-blow out (Blow Out Preventers, BOP), anti-gas, anti-petroleum… various types of accident measures. For example, some [parts] of the pipe, within the ship, have to be anti-corrosive, an anti-hydrocarbon standard has to be maintained. Also some instruments, for example, have to be protected of leaking flows, for example if there’s some spark. So I think that the drilling ship [had to be] very cautiously instrumented by the ten, twenty, thirty years of experience of oil operation industries. So safety, we should say that safety standards were too low in the present design.

At that time, the shipbuilder had been already nominated. Mitsubishi and Mitsui, the JDC for operations, and JAMSTEC engineers, all together had a meeting every day to design… And then the shipbuilder shows the design, the operator claims, sometimes [they say] “this is all wrong,” and they got a fight… (laughs) So the ship was becoming a really, a true oil and gas exploration ship. Essentially, when it was completed, it was the best oil and gas exploration, floating platform ever built by anybody. So, anyway, finally it became like this. But the problem was… [The project] finally became the OD21 [Program] (note: Ocean Drilling in the 21^st Century, the program initially designed to operate Chikyu)… JAMSTEC was the project leader, and I moved from ORI to JAMSTEC in 1995. Something like this… 2002, I guess? II was partly JAMSTEC, partly ORI. I had two jobs at that time, during three years.

BMR: Why did you move from ORI to JAMSTEC? And how was the change for you? Since you had been always been in university institutions.

AT: There was a final review of Chikyu operations, and building Chikyu had already been decided, but who was going to take the leadership later, in the entire project, in the operations, maybe [to manage] any difficulties, [was not yet decided]. I was invited as a guest to this STA committee for discussing the deep sea drilling vessel, the fleet operations; [attendees were] Nasu-sensei and all these big names… I was at the ORI representing ODP and international ocean drilling science, and [I was] supposed to give some opinion on how to operate it. Then… I made a mistake, actually (laughs). My mistake was that, in Japan, in the history of DSDP, IODP and ODP, the project had [always] been led by scientists. Of course, there had been an operator in Texas A&M, for example, the ship operator, but that was different. The ship was operated by a company, like SEDCO or Transocean (note: SEDCO merged with Transocean Ltd. in 1999) … There was of course a representative from Texas A&M in charge of this people. There was a financial sort of [management] – how the money was properly used, and so forth. They oversaw the distribution of money. The National Science Foundation, NSF, was providing the money, together with Monbusho (note: Japan’s Ministry of Education) and the government had a so-called EXCOM (Executive Committee). Above EXCOM, there was a government meeting [group] where NSF and others took a look at the money, budget tuitions, and so forth. But scientific – because this is a scientific project – there got to be some science leader, who had to be continuously looking at [things like] if this a Japanese program, this is the first time in Japan, this is very difficult… Some of that, take the leadership as a scientist. That was my opinion. And then, everyone said, after the meeting… The committee chairman, Matsumoto-san, together with several other fellows gathered around me [and said], “Taira-san, what you should… You had the idea, isn’t it right?” (laughs) [And I said,] “No, no, no, I’m just saying the situation, that we need a scientific leader… but I’m… supposed to be a co-chief of the Nankai (ODP) leg.” “No, no, no, no, Taira-san, you already said you are becoming leader, so you got… If you are not willing to do that, this project… We are going to stop this project” (laughs) [they] kind of blackmailed me (laughs). So I think that I made a mistake, in that [I made] too much emphasis in the scientific leadership, so then I was trapped, you know? I moved from ORI to JAMSTEC. That was a decision I had to make. I was halfway expecting that something could happen… but if I had stayed, somebody [would have taken the place]. Of course, there were several names already raised, like Jimmy (Hajimu) Kinoshita-san and Kiyoshi Suyehiro… All these names being [raised]… Of course, there could be a better leader than me… But anyway, Hajimu Kinoshita, Kiyoshi (Suyehiro), me, the three of us had to work in this project together. So there was not a single person who took the leadership, at that time.

BMR: You three were already experienced in international collaboration, and you were the Japanese leaders of the scientific planning of the Japanese drillship, right?

AT: Yes.

 BMR: How did you communicate to the international community of ODP your plans to build a Japanese drillship?

BMR: It was quite fortunate that JAMSTEC was fully aware of that. Although they said OD21 (a national project), without international support the operation of Chikyu would not last long, even because of the shipboard participation – the number of scientists going on board. If you exclusively use the Japanese community, within five years or so, the population (potential onboard participants) would be exhausted… And at the same time, of course, the purpose of the drillship and of scientific ocean drilling is that the international community goes onboard of the same ship, spends several months together, two or three months, together. That was the most fundamentally important aspect of ocean drilling science, because we get together, discuss, share the same samples, bring together data… Again, all these things were quite an important training, and at the same time a quite important platform for advancing science. So they (JAMSTEC) were fully aware of that. And then I naturally became a kind of salesman of OD21 to the international community, together with Monbusho – at that time the STA fused with Monbusho. At that time I already had many international friends in the ocean drilling community, so I think it was natural.

They (JAMSTEC) had various types of subcommittees, and then there was an international symposium, the OD21 symposium (the OD21 International Conference, in February 1996). And then they have called an International Working Group, which… They were good, because it was led by EXCOM-type level [members], plus an experienced person from NSF. So they discussed the political, the financial, and the scientific aspects together, what kind of structure it should be. I think that everything was… Well, maybe too ambitious, in the beginning. I think that, [about] Chikyu, [they were] initially quite skeptical about Japan putting [together] a riser-capable drillship; [fear] was that… “Japan itself is not an oil producing country, so their petroleum operators are less experienced in drillships, so therefore…” There were [people] from the industry [who] said, “oh, Japan, are they able to operate this ship?” So internally, the clearest concern was [the] private company operator and how to merge [it] with JAMSTEC’s operation team. Initially we received help from JAPEX (Japan Petroleum Exploration Co., Ltd.), Japan’s petroleum company, and they provided personnel to support OD21, the drilling superintendent… In a drillship, there are three [responsible] persons. One is captain, one is the director of drilling [from the] drilling company, [responsible for] drilling operations, and from JAMSTEC’s side, a drilling superintendent, who supervises all this. And, of course, the co-chief scientists. But the ship’s safety is the captain [‘s responsibility], the drilling operations safety is the [responsibility of the] drilling director, and then, merging the scientific requirements with drilling safety issues, that is [the responsibility of] this drilling superintendent from JAMSTEC. So this was a quite important question, being the drilling superintendent, because the co-chiefs are maybe international persons, less experienced in Chikyu, but this person which gets the scientists’ voice and translates it into drilling operations… Or [ensures that] the drilling operations requirements are properly translated into scientific limits, or [foster them to] advance the scientific goals… There was nobody in JAMSTEC for this drilling superintendent position. Nowadays we have [this kind of] people in JAMSTEC (laughs), but in the beginning, nobody had done such a thing. So we got help from JAPEX, Japan petroleum company, and they fully understood the need for this kind of people, and they provided one of the best personnel from their company for [our] operations. That was great.

BMR: What kind of things this people from JAPEX taught about management? I’m asking about the relation between science and industry, and how industry adapted to scientific needs, in the case of operating Chikyu.

AT: Actually it is a long history. In the beginning, JAMSTEC and the international community were less experienced in this kind of drillship operations. Within JAMSTEC, the President (Takuya) Hirano-san and the Executive Director, (Masato) Chijiya-san, other people from STA, and me, I was from the ORI, [discussed about this]. The operation of the drillship was a huge problem within JAMSTEC, because they had no experience in drillships. And a whole conflict built up before [Chikyu] operations started. During its building, after getting its derrick… Chikyu was becoming more into a drillship day by day. At that time [the question was], one, who is the responsible of the Chikyu’s safety? The captain, that was JAMSTEC’s opinion. But people from JAPEX said, “no, no, no, no, it’s the drilling chief, the responsible for safety.” “No, no, no, it’s JAMSTEC.” (laughs). It was difficult situation because we didn’t have the experience. Usually in our side (in Japan’s industry), 90% of the drilling floating rigs were semisubmersible floating rigs, with anchors or some system so they didn’t move. So from the port to the drilling location, they were normally towed by a ship. Of course, there was a captain there, but they didn’t really have any control in maneuvering the platform’s direction. And once it is anchored, it’s obvious [that] it is a floating platform, so the drilling chief was in charge of the operations for drilling for hydrocarbons, oil and gas. But when the drillship became available… Even if Chikyu was the 5^th largest drillship ever built by the [oil and gas] community, how  do you separate the responsibility of…? Because Chikyu moves like a ship, and especially, it moves to one location, drills, and then moves to another location to drill. So the operation of Chikyu is quite different from operating oil platforms. More important is the ship’s movement and the ship’s positioning. So there was some sense, in JAMSTEC, that responsibility of Chikyu’s operations resided on the captain… and therefore they decided that the company which would operate Chikyu was… There were two, one is JDC, Japan Drilling Company, which had been responsible for the design and provided personnel, and they gave a presentation to the international community of what kind of drillship it would be. JDC had laid out the fundamental design, and JDC had been responsible for moving the idea from JAMSTEC’s own drillship towards a more commercial drillship. But they needed a ship operator, not a drill floor operator. The ship operator was then provided by Nippon Yusen company, which is the largest Japanese ship cargo, transporter, seagoing company. And initially it was 50-50, the company’s contribution to [?]. But JAMSTEC said, “No, no, no, the captain is important. It got to be 51-49.” (laughs). 51-49, Nippon Yusen, JDC. JDC got quite… quite… you know, I remember that [they said], “It’s impossible because this is drillship, it got to be 51-49.” 51 for JDC and 49 for Nippon Yusen. I was deep in trouble, with that kind of discussion. I was more inclined to the JDC side, because I thought, “this is drillship.” Drilling – is not just a ship. It’s a huge… derrick… So, the fight between the two companies became unrestorable and JDC quitted the project. I said, “well, we cannot do anymore with this kind of stupid decision.” So all of the sudden we lost the operator, just two years before what was supposed to be the first operation. So it became the Nippon Yusen’s responsibility, to find out [an operator with a] 51-49 ratio of their contribution. They found a small Norwegian company called Smervick. I think nobody knew it. “Smervick? What kind of company is this?” So I went to Norway, visited Smervick, a very small company… They only had one drilling vessel, which was quite old, a converted cargo ship into a drillship, very old one. They had to some extent a company history in the North Sea… It was small but they were trying to do something, you know? And the fighting speed had been… (laughs) so that (small company), compared to big consortium, these big companies… This was a small, family-type company, which was really excited after finding out that they could work with the state of art, the best drillship ever built all of the sudden, [that] they [could be] responsible for operating this state of the art ship. They were so excited. So motivated. So I felt, “well, [this] may not be a bad idea.” So they came and then, I think that Nippon Yusen was more – they got to accept this Norwegian company. So this kind of power balance with the drillships was completely dominated by Smervick, a Norwegian driller, and the captain’s role became smaller, smaller… That was in the beginning. That was [when the] Norwegian driller came to… I think, to some extent… It could have done better things for Chikyu, if I evaluate it. Of course we cannot do stories about “ifs”, or something like this. But it happened that way. Since then, I had the idea that – initially, our purpose [had been to have a] Japanese ship, operated by this Japanese company, so the experience of the drilling ship operations would be stored nationally as a sort of technological experience, or experience in ship operations, shared by the Japanese community and so forth. Not been drained to other countries. So I had been considering the timing to change from Smervick to JDC, maybe within 3-4 years. So I had been thinking which could be the best timing. But, I think, they did okay.

BMR: Before that experience you haven’t’ been dealing with operators and this kind of companies. What kind of things did you learned from that experience?

AT: (laughs)

BMR: Negotiating outside academia.

AT: I made more the direction, but of course the final negotiations was Monbusho’s issue, and sometimes we had to concert (meet) with Monbusho, sometimes with people who came from Monbusho to JAMSTEC… But the direction had to be decided by me. The first major sort of experience of my decision, or critical decision, came right after two years, during the ship’s shakedown cruise. It encountered a huge storm, a record [?] cyclone explosive bomb low pressure (laughs). Anyways, it’s not a typhoon, it came from the continental side, a low-pressure system. But from the southern coast to the northeast Japan, it almost became a huge monster storm. Now it’s often recognized but at that time, even the weather forecast system didn’t really know the evolution of that kind of new storm. Anyway, so during Chikyu’s first riser drilling experience, all of the sudden, a big storm. You may take a look at some video later. In the moonpool you will see water coming up, in the whole moonpool. There are six riser tensioners which pull the riser (note: a riser tensioner is device installed above the moon pool to keep a positive pulling force on the riser pipe, independent of the vessel’s motion due to waves or wind). If you release some of the tension, the riser cannot stay stand, can buckle, and breaks down. So the riser pipe has to be pulled up. It’s a constant pulling in very deep seas, it’s a very difficult operation. And if the hive is too high, the tensioners break the riser from the BOP (Blow Out Preventer, stick to the seabed). The Blow Out Preventer. And that’s what actually happened. So in its first cruise, Chikyu experienced a huge storm, broke the riser, the tensioner, and then broke some parts of the BOP. Wow.

BMR: What was your reaction?

A: I was so shocked. I was onboard before that storm, and then they said, “Taira-san, don’t come to Chikyu” (laughs) “because of Yakubyō gami (note: in Japanese folklore, the sprits of bad luck)… if you are onboard Chikyu, bad things could happen.” (laughs) Anyway, Chikyu experienced this huge storm and it had to be repaired. The cost of that kind of reparation plus the Smedvick personnel, was very large. I think that used up all the budget, and we were coming into a budget shortage. For the next couple of years, we had to find some additional funds somewhere, because Monbusho (‘s budget) was a fixed one year budget. Any kind of accident, which had to be fixed by the annual fixed budget, meant a delay in the [scientific] operations. I did not want that to happen, because it was an international program, so we were going to use Chikyu for the Nankai Trough [expedition] in a riser operation. So the riser and the BOP had to be fixed. And then, we had to do something with the personnel costs, we had to negotiate it with Smervick. By that time, Smervick was bought by a larger oil company, an operation company called Seadrill. Seadrill is a British company much larger than Smervick,  so they could provide more people with a variety of [expertise]. I think that Smervick’s personnel was so limited, that it was very expensive. But after it became  Seadrill, you had more allowance to…

So they (Seadrill) came to me… In a summer day, in Yokohama. Have you seen the ferry wheel (Cosmo Clock 21, in Yokohama)? [We were in] a terrace of a Yokohama big skyscraper, there… Having beer, discussing these accidents and so forth with Seadrill operators, and they said, “Taira-san, I know that you have some problems of budget.” So they said, “we would like to use Chikyu for offshore hydrocarbon operations. It will have two merits. The contractor, which is the company who pays Chikyu, they would like to modify Chikyu a little bit, and then the contractors could also do some of the repairs.” Because at that time, Chikyu was one of the few ships which could drill deeper than 2000 meters water depth with a riser system. So, for the contractor, it was a great opportunity and, for Seadrill, [they would] get experience. And then we could also get some percentage of their contract money. [The money would] return to us, because we were renting a JAMSTEC’s ship for this operation, so some of the daily costs had to be an income for JAMSTEC. So that’s the… kind of story… (laughs).

Well, I didn’t have much choice at that moment. I said, “well, let me consider your suggestion.” I had to consider it. I met with various people and it was finally accepted by Monbusho… It was kind of a rare occasion, that a ship built by taxpayers’ money, before producing scientific results, (laughs) was being used for submarine [resources exploration]. It went offshore Kenya. Kenya and Somalia, near the border offshore Kenya. The contractor was an Australian company, Woodside [Petroleum], an Australian Company. So I also went to Kenya, I gave a lecture in the University of Nairobi and I visited [the ship departing] from Mombasa, in an helicopter ride [that took] something like two hours across the Somali border, flying [along] the coast [with a helicopter] exactly like a Blackhawk (laughs). Beautiful coastline. Offshore, the drillship was encircled by the Kenyan Navy ships, because there was the thread of the Somali piracy. So offshore Kenya… and then, offshore west Australia. It was quite successful operation.

[After that,] we had some budget accumulated in our account that was used for the first scientific operations of Chikyu in Nankai. So it was a tightrope situation, it was very difficult to come up with… I think there was no other choice, at the time. But it made a kind of bad case for Monbusho, to provide budget for the Chikyu. They said, “Aha, JAMSTEC, at any time, can come up with money” (laughs). “So we don’t really need to fix a budget.” They had a fight with the Ministry of Finance to get that kind of money every year, [because] it was a huge operation budget. So they had to be always prepared, about the kind of scientific research, the kind of international [cooperation]… each year, in every negotiation. For them (Monbusho), it was quite a tension, quite a pressure. They had to [do it], because bureaucrats are there for that purpose. But they found the secret for raising money… I don’t think that this caused the decline of Chikyu’s budget, but… It is true that some tension or pressure from Monbusho was relieved, and also for the Ministry of Finance, [when they realized that] this particular project could raise its own money.

BMR: Just to have an idea, in this first case, what percentage of budget did the industry provided? And also, you said these were industrial operations, not for Japanese companies in Japanese seawaters, but for international partners.

AT: So there was a discussion, and of course resentment, with Monbusho that, providing this taxpayers money being used, a Japanese ship being used for the sake of offshore company, international company, not for a Japanese company. But there was no choice. And then…

[Interruption, chatting]

AT: In relation to the bubble economy, the bubble economy sort of collapsed in 1990, and for the next ten years or so, there was still a policy to invest in science and technology, in more basic research, because [it was believed that the] Japanese economy itself had to be rebuild from fundamental research. They believed that some breakthrough would come from fundamental research. But in the twenty-fist century, that kind of policy was declining and, instead, [there was] more requests for short-term returns. Innovation made for the industry, that type of research, received more investment. So the kind of passion for funding the Chikyu, for the next ten years, was getting less and less, in general, in the government. Initially they were so excited, but… Also, the government structure itself changed. In the beginning, even [within] the Ministry of Finance, there was an important sort of middle class personnel there, who were very much fond of the Chikyu project. They said [that] they were very supportive, and some guy, even himself said, “I’m the admirer of the Imperial Chikyu Navy” or something like this (laughs). So, this guy somehow… was kicked out from the Ministry of Finance for some scandal. So the feeling within the bureaucratic community was not really good. They lost passion… So, at that moment, it was a good timing, that Chikyu could raise its own money to be used; that kind of story we’ve just discussed. So (declining budget) it’s somehow related to the collapse of the bubble economy and… The next thirty years are often called the lost thirty years, the dark age, in Japan. So it’s the beginning of this dark age, in terms of scientific investment, funding concerns. What was the topic? (all laugh)

BMR: We were talking about resentment. Monbusho was a bit resented because Chikyu had been used for operations, not for a Japanese company but for foreign companies. We stopped around that.

AT: That actually became a big issue. So there was quite a discussion. And then, finally, we lost the invitation from the international money. So the financial situation overcame any kind of political, well, domestic way of thinking. I think that Chikyu has to move. We need money. Even if it comes from internationally it doesn’t’ matter, as long as it’s operating. Chikyu has to be operated at sea, and unless you operate this kind of ship, the ship quicky degrades. It gets some rust somewhere, and oil leaks… That kind of ship has to be operated constantly. And then the operator gets more experienced, is getting better, and that kind of things. So stopping Chikyu for two years because of the accident, the storm, I mean… for the next ten years it would have been impossible [to operate it], so we got to [quickly] reactivate it. That was the main reason. It doesn’t matter, to me, if it’s [operated for] international or domestic companies. At the end, it worked out. The money was quite large, actually. It covered almost 50% of the total annual budget. Therefore, for the next two years, we used this money prolifically. Also some of the parts were purchased by the company and provided to the ship, because it was part of the contract. And the company knew that Chikyu had had some problem with riser tensioner, because of the storm extent. They knew that, they inspected Chikyu, and then they decided to fix it within the contract, and use it for this operation in Kenya and offshore Australia. Because at the moment, the opportunity… There were not many riser vessels available. And many of them were in the Gulf Coast or in the Atlantic Ocean. But in the Pacific, Chikyu was about the only one available. That was kind of the situation… And also, the oil price was very high, at that time. Everybody wanted deep sea oil. The world economy was not like now, there was a large boom of deep sea oil exploration everywhere in the world. Therefore it became kind of… routine (laughs), in a later time that kind of offshore resource drilling opportunities became an important part of the operators, the Nippon Yusen and Seadrill. Bit before that, five years later (after the first industrial operation) or so, Seadrill became a bigger company and they built a second Chikyu, a third Chikyu.. They really learned a lot from the Chikyu. So, for the Seadrill, it was a golden opportunity to get used to the new [technologies], because this was a state of the art drillship. They eventually tested every part of Chikyu to build their own ship, their second ship. Chikyu was a prototype, so they used their Chikyu’s experience to build their own ships. So Seadrill was expanding very, very quickly, within the next five to seven years.

I will tell you later exactly when, but in about five years, I saw that Seadrill had [got] enough experience from Chikyu. We had also learned enough experience from Seadrill. It was time for JDC to come back. By then, the previous [JAMSTEC] President, Hirano-san, and the people who had decided for the captain, who had caused some internal fight, was all gone… Tensions were relived… So it was time to get JDC back. JAPEX people, who were used to work with JDC, I think they were waiting for JDC to come back. So finally, I went with [Hiroshi] Hotta-san to Norway… I said, “Well, we would like to terminate our contract… and we think that…” I had sensed it because Smervick had more drillships and they didn’t need anymore being the Chikyu operator as main flag. They had many, many drillships. Already four or five drillships available. So we went to Norway, and it was one day, in this nice fiord, which is very… You know, fiords in Norway have a north-east to south-west direction, I think. But this particular fiord is open to the east-west direction, so the sun goes deep into the fiord. It is very bright, [usually] fiords are dark (laughs), [covered in] shadows because of the high cliffs’ shadows. But this is bright fiord, a nice scenery; and they charted a sort of cruising boat, and on the boat there was champagne – a lot (laughs), shrimps and… On that boat I said, “well, it’s time that we say sayonara. Thank you very much for your contribution so far, and all the best for your oil finding.” And they said, “we understand the situation.” So we shook hands and had a friendly departure for both sides. Finally, we got JDC back to Chikyu. It was a great thing. But later, it turned out to be a disaster (laughs).

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is June 12 of 2024. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC. I’m with Asahiko Taira-san at JAMSTEC’s Tokyo office. It’s our fourth meeting, and we were going to start talking about how Chikyu started, in the 2005…

Asahiko Taira (AT): In 2005 it started the shakedown training cruise.

BMR: So how Chikyu started operating with money from the government, Monbusho at that time, but also with money from companies. I was wondering if this was something unexpected for… I mean, the money that was needed for running Chikyu…

AT: Well, that is not true, in a sense. But Chikyu had to be solely operated by government money. And we were not expecting anything from outside. Of course, we welcomed any contribution, but that was really not the case. So the budget for the operation of Chikyu should be… Covered solely by the government funding, only. So they operation money had to be pre-studied, and we asked the contractor – that was the Nippon Yusen company, together with the Norwegians Smervick, that later became a company called Seadrill. And they gave us some estimates of how much it could cost the operation of Chikyu. “We’d like to do this, and this, and this.” We proposed the plan. And they came up with the money. Then, of course, we negotiated. Something like, “we cannot do that because of this level of budget,” and so forth. But it turned out to be… The price was very expensive. I think there was a (high) human cost, due to the Norwegian engineers. Their salary was really extraordinarily high. Maybe four or five times the (salary of) Japanese employees. Plus, they found that some of the facilities around the moonpool, for example some other parts that they requested, some modification or additional (equipment), some… Cranes got to be installed in order to make operations safer. But that money was not included in operations. We could have done more longer negotiations for assessment with the operator, but the operator of Chikyu was due to the confusion or some of the conflict within Japanese operator plus, including the outside operator. And mainly due to the Nippon Yusen versus Japan Drilling Company conflict, the assessment of the operations, so how we are going to really operate this ship, it was taken too much time, because there were a lot of confusion and conflicts.

So bringing the Seadrill was decided really in the last moment of the scheduled shakedown, the scheduled first trial. Something like half a month before Chikyu got to sail outside. So it was a very quick preparation. Then, there were a couple of problems… The first trial started from Shimokita. At that time there was Smervick, the Seadrill people, with CDEX as JAMSTEC’s side supervising the entire operation. We were the owners of the ship, therefore we got to supervise (it). And then, the scientific crew, that was international even at the shakedown. There was a scientific engineers’ crew, like logging (experts) and so forth. We even contracted the Schlumberger logging team. Then, there was also an engineering team from the operator, which was Seadrill plus other crew members. The team was… Same as in the other drillships, in a scientific drillship we have the operator there, coming from the commercial company; we have the supervisor, who comes from JAMSTEC, and then the scientific crew. And, of course, there are some outside contractors to do scientific work, like in the laboratory, supervising lab technicians, and so forth. These three teams have to sit down, have to evaluate far before the actual sailing; but we just didn’t have too much time.

So we started the first cruise, but before that, it was quite apparent that we were going to have a shortage of funds. Because the estimated fund for the shakedown operation was already being discussed, before this… Before the mess (laughs). So two or three years before, it had been requested to the government. Before the whole operation team turned out to be much more expensive than expected. But, anyway, we started the shakedown cruise and the first year, in the first season, we were stuck by a very strong low pressure system, called the… This is not typhoon, but ta low pressure system from the continent that developed quickly along the shore of the north Sea of Japan, and then… There were huge waves during the riser drilling operations, and the riser had to be emergency released… But apparently it hit — there is an upper blow out preventer (BOP) and a lower BOP. The upper BOP was released from the bottom because the heaving was exceeding the limit of the riser tensioner. The tensioner is the one which pulls out the BOP in tension, because the BOP has to be in constant tension. But due that huge hive, it exceeded tensioner’s displacement, so it got to be released and apparently the lower and upper BOP collided each other. We actually managed to retrieve the upper BOP.

BMR: And the lower BOP was left?

AT: We could also recover the lower part later, after the sea calmed down. But that was a case in which we… We understood that we needed a closer collaboration between our supervisor from the operator and the other team, together within the ship. The ship’s crew was from Nippon Yusen, a Japanese team. And the drilling team was from Seadrill, which is a Norwegian team. And their communication… Well, because even at the Nippon Yusen, the captain was used to be a captain of large cargo ships, of cruisers, cruising ships…Therefore, they didn’t know much about it (note: about operating a drilling vessel). That is the reason why we needed a shakedown, but it was… Fortunate or unfortunately, we met an emergency situation from the beginning. So we realized that there had to be a closer collaboration. We also realized that, in those kind of cases, the drilling team has to be in control of the ship; otherwise the ship’s crew cannot really handle… Cannot decide what they should do with the riser drilling system and so forth. Even JAMSTEC’s supervisor, the final decision came from him, from JAMSTEC. But all the information, everything, should be taken by the drilling team. So, we learned that. And then, by that time… As I said before, Seadrill conducted some modifications on the ship that were necessary for safer operations. And both teams needed to develop more experience, for riser operations and from the ship’s crew, the Nippon Yusen team. Then, they realized a shortage of funds, in order to continue with riser operations. So they (Seadrill) requested to take Chikyu outside for commercial drilling… Offshore of Kenya and Australia.

BMR: That was the big decision.

AT: (laughs) That was the big decision I got to do; me and others. At that time, Mr. (Yasuhiro) Kato was the president of JAMSTEC and I was CDEX director, so I had to consult everything with Kato-san and then, together with Monkashō (note: abbreviation for Monbukagakushō, the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology or MEXT in English), we decided, we accepted Seadrill’s and Nippon Yusen’s proposal for the commercial operation, yes.

BMR: What was the reaction in the scientific community, of having Chikyu doing its first expeditions for commercial research, instead than for the scientific program?

AT: That was during… We decided that the shakedown would take  two years. So Chikyu first went to sea in 2005 (for the shakedown cruise), and we expected that in 2007 would be the first scientific drilling for studying Nankai. These things took place within the expected two years shakedown. So I think that that was half a year, or forty days, which more or less were within the framework of the expected range. Not so much behind the schedule for 2-3 years, but within the domain of the fiscal year. Therefore I think that there was not much… But there was also concern on the scientific community, “why Chikyu has to go offshore, to Somalia, Kenia…?” (laughs) There were many, many discussions; but, you know, we were not expecting any scientific drilling during that time. So we convinced them that Chikyu would become better, and its funding money would be a little bit relieved by adding commercial funds. So I think it was, for the scientific community, Chikyu became stronger and a better trained vessel than expected.

BMR: So actually it didn’t affect IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program). Chikyu started IODP when it was planned.

AT: Uhm.

BMR: So, let’s pick up the story back when we left it in our previous interview, in “JCD (Japan Drilling Company) is back as drilling operator and something happens.”

AT: (laughs) So, JDC… Smervick, Seadrill (note: Smervick later became part of Seadrill), came in, among the team for Chikyu’s operations. That was the team with which Nippon Yusen company had the main contract. They brought Seadrill as operator. And because of the conflict between JDC and Nippon Yusen, there was a kind of mismanagement within JAMSTEC on how to build the team… There was also some kind of confusion related to missing information within the contract, in Nippon Yusen.

All, the initial design of drill floor and everything, was done by JDC. That design was given to Mitsubishi, who did the shipbuilding. So the initial design, all the drilling requests, the equipment, the dimensions… Everything was decided by JDC, essentially. But then… JDC was not included as operator. They were quite, I would say… frustrated, in a sense. But… It is a Japanese drillship, a government’s drillship, and the drilling skills to operate it in the deep sea had to be transferred to the Japanese community or Japanese companies. It is not something like patriotism or anything like this, but it is natural economic consequence, I think. So I, together with people from JAPEX (Japan Petroleum Exploration Company), because… At JAMSTEC, the CDEX was the supervisor (of Chikyu’s operations), but to supervise the drillship we needed a person who had experience in rigs, oil rigs, especially in floating oil rigs. This people had to supervise and plan the drillholes and evaluate the consequences. So, for example, planning a drilling hole – the way to drill in this particular location, something like two-hundred meters of non-coring riser casing, the way of drilling after that… What kind of casing using to drill several hundred meters, the strategy… These had to be planned by JAMSTEC, and we gave this order to the contractor (note: the drilling operator). And then the operator would drill the way we gave them the plan. Of course, sometimes we could modify the plan on the drillship, but the initial plan had to be given to the operator by us, by JAMSTEC. But JAMSTEC didn’t have any experience. So it was natural to get people from the Japanese companies. So, an oil company, which gives to the contractor some kind of plan and decision. This Japanese company had experience in oil rig operations, and is a company which is half government and half private company, therefore they are closer to… Understanding the government-type of operations. That was JAPEX, Japan Petroleum Exploration Company. So we had several people (from there). We asked JAPEX to send personnel to CDEX, JAMSTEC, and we hired them as – they had a position at JAMSTEC although they still held their position at JAPEX – they became temporary JAMSTEC employees. So they were the persons who made all the decisions for the drilling operations. They were supervising the ship. They gave the planning decision to Nippon Yusen and Seadrill. But JAPEX and JDC were very close. They in the past were one branch of JAPEX, which later became independent. So after the independence process, I don’t think that they really had a friendly situation (laughs) but still, I think that some of the JAPEX people used to work together with JDC, so they knew the JDC very well. And the people from JAPEX strongly wanted to bring the JDC back to operation. Therefore the Japanese line of learning and operating the ship would smoothen out. And, in a way, we would become a more national-type of operations, instead of getting the knowhow from another site. So we wanted, and I personally strongly wanted, to get JDC back to the business. Back to the operations.

BMR: When you talk about people in JAPEX and in JDC, where they working in CDEX?

AT: Yes.

BMR: So, were they teaching the people in CDEX… I mean, was there some kind of exchange between them?

AT: Well, yes, sure… The JAPEX people came from a company, but they were not retired from there… But some people, like from the other oil company, they were kind of really interested, so interested in this program that asked or even we hired them at JAMSTEC. So they became JAMSTEC employees, and became part of the supervising and planning team. So we recruited them, and then JAPEX also leased people from the outside. One or a few people from JAPEX itself were from Schlumberger ant they came together as a team. So the team of JAMSTEC’s CDEX, the Chikyu operation team – of course, there is (people with) a scientific background, who supervised the laboratory, logging operations, and these things. They had a scientific background; some came from universities, some of them from Schlumberger, some were from the Japan national oil company – currently the JOGMEC (Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security), and then this team, together with the Japanese team, came… Initially, they were not really united, but they grew together, as JAPEX transferred some of the knowledge and some of the experience they had.

The Chikyu’s operation team as a whole, the supervising team as a whole, evolved through these initial 2 or 3 years, or even five years, of experience. I think that, in my view, it took about five years, to more or less become team-like. (laughs) Initially, communication was difficult… And then, also, besides the CDEX team, there were some JAMSTEC branches, like the ship operation branch. For example, they had the ROVs, the Remotely Operating Vehicle team. But for the Chikyu, we charted a special ROV only dedicated to Chikyu’s operations. In order to get this contract, we had to go through the JAMSTEC evaluation system and so forth. There was a strong opinion from the ship operation team, “why do you need this particular ROV?” and, “why don’t you use our ROV?”. But, you know, it was… It took one week or so of discussions to convince them. Initially many, many such things happened. Therefore it was not easy to make a smooth transition from the beginning to have a more experienced team, and the experience was shared among them. But among JAPEX as a whole, it took about 5 or 6 years in total, I guess.

BMR: For how many years were you director of CDEX?

AT: Let me see (laughs) (looks at papers). I was CDEX director from 2002 to 2006, I guess. Four years.

BMR: And then?

AT: And then I became a so-called Executive Director.

BMR: Of JAMSTEC?

AT: Of JAMSTEC, from 2006 to 2012. But I was, my whole job at that time was even to supervise Chikyu. So instead of (laughs)… There was the CDEX operator, the CDEX director – I think I was replaced by (Wataru) Azuma-san. But I was on top of Azuma-san as an Executive Director, therefore our relation was a little bit complicated. But I had given (to him) the operation; and I was more in charge of this change of JDC (note: the change of operator), bringing JDC back, getting more budget, and then supervising the more financial and operational side of the… international side. So, larger issues.

BMR: So not really much more science for you.

AT: I had given up science in 2002 (laughs), when I became CNEX director. I totally gave up science. (It was) impossible to do that.

BMR: Did you enjoy managerial positions?

AT: Well.. You know… It’s something like… Responsibility, I felt. Not really… Well, to enjoy is a different story. But I didn’t really… I did not dislike it, but… I was not fond of that (laughs). But, “I got to take (care of) this whole thing.” Gradually, if you start doing that, there are some interesting points. There is something you learn, when facing some real challenge, or in areas where I had never been before… Those kind of things are interesting. In this sense, I enjoyed those kinds of situations. But some situations… You know, negotiating with government… Repeating the same, same phrase a hundred times… Begging sometimes (laughs). Those kind of things, I didn’t really like them at all, but.

BMR: I imagine that it is also about the responsibility you have. It’s not the same being responsible of a research team or a lab than being responsible of you know, such a big…

AT: Yes.

BMR: So, back to JDC being back, you mentioned that there was some kind of problem. Was it what you just explained to me, that sometimes communication was not very smooth?

AT: Communication was not easy, that’s true. But JDC, his ways… The president was called Mister Ichikawa. His way… And there were some others within JDC… Mr. Uetake, he was very, deeply fond of this program… So he was a counterpart of myself and (Shohei) Kobayashi-san. You may interview him later. We got along very well. But Mr. Ishikawa, he was a very smart guy, but also very, in a way… he was aggressive, in a simple word. And therefore his concern, his main interest, was to expand JDC as much as possible as a large company. And finally, the point after the [?] crisis, when the oil price went down very quickly, he had already invested in expanding his (company) in Quatar, I think. The main field for JDC’s income was gas production in Arabian (countries), I think Qatar, Dubai, or one of this – a small emirate, Arabian country. And because of that overinvestment, because oil prices quickly went down, I think, JDC bankrupted. That happened some time very close to the end of Nankai (Trough) drilling.

BMR: The first Nankai drilling?

AT: No, later, something like 2015 or 2016, that kind of time frame. I forgot exactly when it was.

BMR: We can check it later. Was this the moment when MQJ (Mantle Quest Japan) took over?

AT: No, no, MQJ was one branch of JDC. It is the same company.

BMR: Okay.

AT: Although JDC bankrupted and came under control of – how they call it – recovery. They are controlled by outside funds, so… As a company, they have to do some, I don’t know exactly about this kind of process. The company itself is controlled by outside funds, so there is no really a government board or anything like this. But MQJ was a part of, was under the JDC; but it’s a kind of company which only operates Chikyu, and as long as it’s totally dependent on the government’s money or funds…

BMR: Okay, so JDC can disappear but MQJ will still…

AT: So this funds went to JDC and they decided to dismantle the whole thing; but they didn’t dismantle everything. They kept MQJ as, maybe, (an opportunity for) rebuilding the company with MQJ at its core. Because MQJ, as long as Chikyu and JAMSTEC exist, as long as we don’t decide to kick out MQJ or we disconnect the contract, MQJ’s kind of body will be alive. And then… it’s alive. At the same time, every year, several tens of million of dollars are available as income through this contract. And it’s – myself, (laughs) I’m some of the investor or something like this, to keep MQJ, because this is at the core of the project. So MQJ survived. But JDC was gone. The consequence was that JDC had been the main body for getting contracts outside, for (getting) commercial funds. So JDC negotiated with outside commercial business; and MQJ was the one which simply operated Chikyu. So JDC did all the economic planning, the company planning was by JDC. So losing JDC, for us, was like we lost the outside commercial operation funds.

BMR: Was JDC a sort of mediator, the one that mediated between you and the companies?

AT: Yes. That means… But this happened during the time of the quick oil price drop. Therefore the available commercial (contracts), the (number of) contracts was getting lesser and lesser, almost none; and even the big drillship operating companies like Transocean, Seadrill… They started selling their drillships. It was a really bad time for the two, three, five years. Even before the Ukraine crisis, I think, the oil price was really… There was stabilizing at that moment a little bit, but… For many years, we couldn’t get commercial funds. But we could get the contract from the Japanese government for methane hydrates, and the SIP (Cross-ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program) is doing the rare earth (program) and other JOGMEC work for the hydrothermal ore deposits.

BMR: So actually Chikyu started to work more, besides the science and IODP, to work more for national companies and national programs.

AT: Yes

BMR: So the money kind of stayed within Japan, so to speak.

AT: That’s right.

BMR: Did you have a backup money for the science, at that time? When JDC bankrupted… I’m curious to know how was the situation at IODP, because that timeframe coincides with the first years of the second IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program, 2013-2024), when the Central Management International office dissolved.

AT: Yeah, yeah. The first IODP MI (Management International) started in 2003, something like this. You mentioned the scientific money. In our case, the scientific money has… Essentially, there are three types of scientific money within the Japanese community.

The money that JAMSTEC receives for Chikyu operations, which is money from Monkasho, and within that money is included some Chikyu shipboard scientific work, money for using Chikyu. Scientific money, for site survey (research) and additional work, analyses, and these things, are funded through the Kochi Core Center. Plus, we have scientific branches within JAMSTEC, like seismic studies, geochemical studies… They have their own money. So, the budget comes to JAMSTEC and then, within JAMSTEC, it is divided among the different groups. Chikyu operations is of course one of the largest ones. Additional money… Some of them include the scientific work using Chikyu, plus additional scientific studies related to core analysis, image analyses… That kind of money. And then, for outside JAMSTEC, we organized J-DESC, the Japan Drilling Earth Science Consortium. And then we provided some money to J-DESC from Chikyu operations for traveling to international committee meetings, and shipboard, going to the JOIDES Resolution and the Mission Specific Platforms from Europe. So J-DESC, they also collect their own money from membership, from each university or institution. So they have some scientific budget – a little bit like the US Science Support Office. Here it is the Japanese science support office, J-DESC. They used to have its main headquarter at the University of Tokyo Ocean Research Institute, but now they moved to JAMSTEC. They have money to support the young research scientists and those kinds of things. And together with that, initially they…

In the beginning, there was a grand design in IODP, that later became… The whole program, kind of separated ship operations in three parts: Chikyu, the JOIDES Resolution, and the Mission Specific Platforms. The weak point of ODP (Ocean Drilling Program) was that various drilling-related new scientific methods, or technologies, or some of the new shipboard measurement, these were totally developed by ship operators. There was virtually very few scientific money, which was common to this three operations. Therefore, we initially designed to develop, let us say, an X-ray, XRF, core scanner… “We need this on three operating ships as a common tool…” “maybe in the future, X-ray, Tomographic CT scan, more compact ones… being operational in every ship,” type of thigs. Plus, new proposals to provide some money to drilling or core-related new science, coming from the independent funding agencies in Europe, NSF, Monkasho, and the others. Plus, within the program, we wanted to keep the scientific cooperation part. So Manik Talwani-san became the head (of IODP MI). Initially, there was a very large fund for scientific operations. I don’t remember, but something like 30 million USD or so. Maybe I’m wrong, but between 20 and 30 million for scientific operations. How could we manage to bring that much money? I forgot exactly how… Well, the government, the more we got the membership, the membership funds were put into the scientific operation funds. Instead of operation money, which was decided to be paid by the operating body: Chikyu by JAMSTEC, JOIDES Resolution by NSF… But the international membership was common to all the program, so it got to be used for a common purpose. So…

BMR: So it was a big budget for the scientific funds, for doing science in the three platforms, for bringing the scientists in, and…

AT: And that would be managed by IODP MI.

BMR: But it didn’t work as expected.

AT: (laughs) Uhm… it worked, initially. But… There was a problem of… In a sense, the international group, like Australia and New Zealand in ANZIC, China and Brazil, for example – we were trying to get Brazil –, others outside Europe, Japan, the US… The community outside Europe had funds to be used in scientific operations, but it wasn’t favored by other international contribution. I think they, instead – it is common to consider, instead of paying a very large contribution of funds from each other… For example, Australia and New Zealand, they would like to keep the membership fee as small as possible. Instead, the funds they secured within Australia and New Zealand, they’d like to use it for the sake of their scientists. Instead of providing to IODP, “here’s a large membership fee; you, Manik, you decide how we’re gonna use it.” It’s… so the membership was only for the paying the seat in each of the platforms.

BMR: Like the berth.

AT: Yes. So how many (scientist from each IODP member) would be on board. You pay this, and in one year you get two scientists on Chikyu, or one scientist on Chikyu… There was a certain minimum membership fee. And then, the model was modified and changed, so international contribution for the ship operation was getting smaller and smaller, instead, to make use of their own fund for their own purposes. So apparently the IODP MI’s ambition was getting smaller and smaller. Because science operation funds were getting smaller. Of course I’d also like to, Manik was very active in getting funds from the oil companies, other large international… oil and drilling; making Schlumberger (a partner for) the geotechnical support, geotechnical companies… But apparently it was getting smaller and smaller. Therefore they got to reduce operations so… Manik was, in the beginning, like an emperor of the (laughs) IODP. “I decide everything,” kind of situation. But his power was getting smaller and smaller. He was not getting more interest in this. So the very, very faithful, honest, Kiyoshi (Suyehiro)-san took over IODP MI. Also, in order to bring the Chikyu to the international collaboration, study like IODP… We considered bringing the headquarters of the IODP science operations, IODP MI. That would, in a sense, justify the Chikyu’s funds because we would be contributing not just a ship, but international cooperation being also… At least the headquarters’ office would be in Japan. And also, we thought that it would better internationalize the Japanese science community and the university research, in a sense.

BMR: I imagine that initially the headquarters were in the US.

AT: Uhm.

BMR: When you say bringing the management the headquarters of IODP MI, it means that before it was in the US.

AT: Yes, it was in the US. It was a US company, IODP MI – well, a legal entity.

BMR: It was an American legal entity working internationally. That was one of the…

AT: And then exactly how to transfer this one legal entity, to Japan…

BMR: But bringing that management office, did it mean to transform it into a Japanese company, or just bringing an American entity…?

AT: I think it was transferring, yes. Those are the very complex discussions… My memory is also a little bit… But you can ask Kiyoshi-san (Suyehiro) (laughs)

BMR: (laughs) Yes. You were also saying that the intention of bringing IODP MI was also to internationalize more the community.

AT: Exactly, exactly, sure. One thing that I remember, there was a very interesting discussion. I may have mentioned that, at the beginning of Manik Talwani at IODP MI, there was a discussion, because IODP MI was initially the one who would receive the proposals. So the scientific committee was, in a sense, within the IODP MI framework. So, during the ODP, the proposals were leg by leg, cruise by cruise proposals, short in time… and the issues, the targets to be addressed, [were] within the regional – not necessarily regional, but so many cores, transects, and so forth, were not pursuing larger scale issues for many years. Like NASA’s missions to the outer solar system or something like this (laughs).

BMR: Like the mantle drilling.

AT: The experience gained in the first cruise has to be transferred to the second cruise, so there could be a continuous evolution or transition from one to the other… You need connectivity and a long range plan. And the total money could be a quite large investment. So that kind of proposal, like Nankai (Trough), how are we gonna discuss it within the scientific community? How are we gonna accept the proposals? How it should be? So there was a meeting it Frascati, near Rome…Have you ever heard…?

BMR: Frascati?

AT: Frascati meeting. The Frascati retreat, that Manik Talwani called, outside Rome. We were called by Manik-san, me and some other people… How we were chosen was, well, each operator or at least a representative from Europe, the US and from some scientific community, like SCICOM (Science Committee) chairman… That kind of people. Not a large committee. In total, I guess 10 or 15 people, I think. We met together and we discussed this issue, of large projects vs a traditional leg-dependent science proposal. So my proposition was, of course, Chikyu is quite suited to operate with large targets. Like Nankai and mantle drilling would need a long range planning. Because of that, we could not propose to the government that, “this is an international proposal, it takes ten years,” something like this. Then, we were not asking the government to give us a ten-years fund, not with with all confirmed, with all promised but, “we are drilling this, this and this”. Therefore we needed two types of proposals in the system. Long range, large issues, and then large budgets. The community had to, in a sense, involve a large group. But… probably, those who would get the merit from that large, long-range proposal, the amount of investment received per person, could be far larger than a leg-dependent proposal. So, the… There was a feeling within the Frascati group that we would treat this large-scale science, long-range proposal group, in a quite special way among the drilling community. So that could lead to get more merit than anybody else. So there was an “imbalance in the community” feeling… It could be okay to merge proposals into that kind of system, but deciding “this is long-range planning proposal,” “this is traditional proposal,” so two types, could not be accepted by the science community. I was a little bit surprised and then shocked, and… Manik was apparently at our side. (He had a) very similar way of thinking.

BMR: Your side was long-range proposals.

AT: Yes. Manik was at the long-range planning side. And then, in the next planning committee, or maybe a higher planning committee, I guess, the Executive Committee of IODP, Manik reported about the Frascati report. And it turned out to be, I think, that the prediction among the others was right. They were quite resented, quite… not in direct denial, but a, “uhm…” type of reacting.

BMR: Is it possible that the reaction came from the fact that the JR had been operating in leg by leg basis for all its life, so it was already forty years of operation; and now Chikyu comes in, and Chikyu is not so mobile, like the JR, Chikyu cannot do the same things. So Chikyu is more fitted for long range.

AT: Exactly.

BMR: So, that would create an imbalance towards the Japanese… sort of side of the project.

AT: I think, well, people didn’t really realize (at that time) the way Chikyu operates. The Frascati meeting was still, just about starting the initial shakedown, so not the scientific (operations). Of course, we had to decide the sort of proposal for the Nankai (Through project). So, we didn’t really make a decision about type of proposals.

Instead, we made the Nankai drilling team, within the… Not really the exact the scientific community or within the advisory structure, but I think that… This scientific advisory structure recognized that there was a group of scientists and engineer organizers at JAMSTEC operating as a – there was the Nankai proposal, written by the NanTroSEIZE team, which was doing the actual planning. So on the other side, there was a relatively sharp boundary between the JR operations, the scientific proposals, and the actual ship operations. But here, for the Nankai scientific proposal, the operational scheme had to be consulted at the same time that the scientific plan. The scientific team and the operational team, they had to meet together many, many times. So there was a long-range proposal, in this way of merging the science and the operations together. This was a case quite different from the JR.

So, the (IODP) advisory structure was trying to decide on the science in Nankai, and operation by the technical advisory group. They were trying to use the scientific advisory scheme for the long range operation of Chikyu and of the NanTroSEIZE project… But it was almost impossible to do that, because they can evaluate occasionally, but it (the planning) got to make this scientific (and operational) team. So instead of clearly deciding from the beginning, “this is a long-range plan,” “this is a…,” I think that eventually this emerged as a long-range planning, and therefore, “let’s let the community move whatever the way they want to move.” So in the Frascati report, Manik tried to make clearer that “this is a long-range plan”… for example. Use this to get some funds from the outside… That kind of things. Trying to make it as large, sort of chunk of issues which he can sell to the outside. But… It was not really the case.

BMR: So NanTroSEIZE, was it the only long-range plan that was scheduled (for IODP)?

AT: I think that, in reality, that is the only one case. Well, we had a mantle drilling team, which they have tried and have gathered together many, many times, but… Operation hasn’t really started. But, at least,  the mantle proposal is there. The proposal exists, written by [?] and others, and based on that, the site survey has already been done offshore Hawaii. But operation has not really started yet. But when operations start, they should work, in some way, as NanTroSEIZE has done.

BMR: Do you still see the goal of reaching the mantle equally important as you thought about it when Chikyu was planned?

AT: Well, the three main issues, the three targets which inspired me – one is the seismogenic zone, plate boundary drilling. Which is natural, because I’ve been working on Nankai (Trough). It’s my favorite subject. And then, the deep biosphere, which… I think that one of the main reasons we continued the drilling program from ODP to IODP was – to bring the Chikyu was one thing – but the deep biosphere, with three platforms… We could study the entire ocean, for the deep biosphere. With the deep biosphere, I was not convinced to have three operating platforms. But for Chikyu, I got convinced (laughs).

The mantle was very special type of drilling. There are many interesting projects and scientific teams related to the mantle. We know that probably the mantle, the upper most mantle, is composed of olivine and pyroxene, and some other… Fluids maybe exist, but in what form, we don’t know yet. But, for example, the type of compounds needed for composing life forms, like the chemical evolution of the first cell… you know, they are bringing many samples from the cosmic (space) and the solar system, like X Mission, asteroids… They are telling us many new things about the origin of water, the origin of some amino acids, and even life… But the same kind of things may be true for the mantle. Therefore, are there any hydrocarbons within the mantle? Even within the fluid inclusions? Or even the olivine? These are some of the mysteries which led to the habitability of the Earth, the Earth we live on today. And that is probably because of the water, the mantle and crust interaction with the hydrosphere, atmosphere and solid earth system. But the mantle, we don’t know (it). We know all the dead bodies of the (laughs) human… these are dried squid. But a squid is softer. But still, these are interesting, but investing another, you know, the total operational costs could be something like 200 or 300 million dollars for operation cost. We need something that really, really grabs the other part of the scientific community, plus the funding agency. “What can you learn from the…?”, which is exactly the same question (that was posed) when the Mohole (Project) started. The first meeting of the Mohole was discussed at National Academy of Sciences (USA), and the first question was, “what do you learn from one single hole into the mantle?.” You get something like a 200 meter penetration, you get rock samples, for example, and then? Of course, Harry Hess and Walter Munk didn’t have anything to say; but exactly the same question could be asked sixty years later.

BMR: Maybe more.

AT: (laughs) maybe more.

BMR: Because the Mohole Project was planned in the 1957 or something…

AT: Yes, seventy years later. It’s the same question being asked. So to convince… There are some new ideas emerging from the other science community, but still, we need… Do you know this, mantle drilling contributing to the mystery of the dark matter?

BMR: No… What is this?

AT: This is a serious (drilling) proposal.

BMR: Oh.

AT: In the entire universe, the existence of dark energy and dark matter is required to explain some of the behavior and distribution of galaxies. And, for example, there’s the gravity wave effect. The light coming from the outer university to the nearby areas, bends. That’s Einstein’s effect. In order to explain that, you need something, the mass, which you cannot see. The interaction is very big, but what kind of particles are they? There are some estimations, but… In the present day, there’s an experiment being done in many places to tell what kind of particle could be a candidate for the dark matter, in the entire universe. There is the idea among the scientists who study this particle physics and the origin of the universe, to use the Earth as a whole, as a detector. By means of the mantle being made out of olivine. Olivine is… The upper mantle is quite deployed of radioactive elements. There is a very small content of radioactive elements. All the radioactive elements are depleted from the crust, so there is no nearby radioactive source. Therefore, if the olivine is at the spreading ridge, because of the cooling of the plate, it goes deeper and deeper… Starting at two to five kilometers, there is the Mohole. So they have a life of about a hundred million years. In the case of the Hawaii, is sixty to eighty million years old. And during that time, in this particular part of the mantle, the olivine mineral is there, moving, but stays in an environment more or less depleted from radioactive sources. So if some particle comes in… It seems like the dark matter, like neutrinos, can go through the entire Earth without making any interaction. So if there are some particles, it can collide with the particles composing the minerals… The problem is, in an experiment you use a large chamber filled in with liquid, and we could detect this interaction of the dark matter with some of the particles within the chamber. Exactly like a neutrino detector. So they use a large chamber and mass, but the experiment time… you cannot run the experiment for a thousand years. (it should be done) at least within one scientist life or two generations of scientists. And, you know, it costs a lot of money to maintain the experiment apparatus active, and time is limited.

But here there is a small mass, a chunk of mantle, maybe we can make a little larger but… One mineral, but its life is eighty million years. So the probability that this particular mineral has been hit by dark matter, and it has made some track, like a fission track, a scratch… And then, we should do all the calculation and so forth. This is possible if you have, if you have a way to detect the track. (laughs)

BMR: So first, to gather the sample from the lowest part of the crust, and then to analyze it.

AT: Well, from the mantle, directly.

BMR: So it’s really going to the mantle, the upper part of the mantle.

AT: Yes, it has to be olivine. Like, you know, underneath the Mohole. The olivine within the mantle. You don’t need to go deep. But… Cosmic rays are the problem, the shield effect of the cosmic rays. You can calculate probability but… It’s assumed that there are several types of dark matter, each has a different reaction with some of the atoms of the olivine. So, this is an interesting proposal. If you get a mantle core and finds some way to identify the fission tracks in olivine, you can detect the dark matter. I thought, “this is very interesting!” Actually in JAMSTEC, Hirose-san, and Abe-san also, are involved in this.

BMR: It would be so interesting to see some day this mixing of mantle drilling with particle physics. It’s… interesting, because it provides an argument or scientific justification to reach the mantle. So it’s not anymore – the question you asked, of why going to the mantle – it’s not anymore for the sake of it, for prestige, like in the fifties it was going to the space or to the Moon. It’s like… We  know so much now, that it’s not only for reaching the deepest point ever, or areas where humans have not direct experience. We can do other things that are also important. And that’s also a beautiful way to connect the center of the Earth with the universe.

AT: That is interesting, and I’m extremely interested in this dark matter detection and the concept of using the whole mantle as a detector, instead of the neutrino large chamber. And the mantle mineral being… The mineral receives some outside disturbance occasionally, and that can be detected… So, the same thing can be considered for a neutrino coming from the inside of the Earth. There are two types of neutrino particles, one is coming from the outside, and then the Earth itself provides a form of core neutrino.

The amount of neutrino coming from inside the core provides the why the Earth’s interior is hot. There are a lot of theoretical discussions about that. How the temperature of 600 degrees is set? Why is that? That kind of discussion has many ways of estimating it, but one critical observation is that the Earth neutrino… there is a discussion that the ocean floor can be a detector… That kind of thing. If you drill the mantle, then probably the neutrino may not be as… because there is no interaction. So we need some detector. And a detector within the mantle is far better than on land, because it is very much free to the noise. All that kind of particle detection is disturbed by nuclear power plants. So if you have some detector system within the mantle, you are completely free from nuclear power plant effect. But there got to be, somebody has to invent a neutrino detection device that you can insert into the hole, into the mantle. Then, I can convince…

BMR: And someone needs to put the money (laughs)

AT: (laughs), then I can convince together with our own original idea of going to the Mantle, understanding the system, plus dark matter, plus the Earth’s core neutrino. If you have three fields, Earth Sciences, Cosmic Science, and internal thermal regime, I think that we can call all the way to get some support. It’s being discussed, but I’m waiting for something new, some good news coming.