Dave McInroy

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is September 4 of 2024. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC. I’m in Shizuoka with David McInroy. Thank you. So, can you please introduce yourself? Say your name, institution and current position.

David McInroy (DM): My name is David McInroy, I work at the British Geological Survey. I’m a marine geoscientist, and I’m also the Science Manager of ECORD Science Operator.

BMR: Thanks. I always start by asking, where did you grow up, how was your childhood like?

DM: I grew up in the west of Scotland, in the UK. I think I had a fairly normal childhood. My dad was a doctor, my mother was a biology teacher. There were no geologists or Earth scientists in the family. I enjoyed outdoors, did lots of activities with my brothers, as well… So yeah, fairly kind of standard childhood.

BMR: Why did you choose geology?

DM: That’s a really good question. I think I always liked geography. I always liked understanding how the Earth formed, and why the mountains look the way they did, and the valleys look the way they did, why beaches form… So. anything that kind of form the world, I was really interested on it. But it was not until I made it further through school that I learned that where I was really interested in was in geology. It was not physical geography; it was geology that I was interested in learning about.

I also spoke to a family friend who was working in the oil and gas industry. He was a material scientist, so he was involved in the technology: how to reach oil and gas targets using the latest technology. It wasn’t so much the oil and gas industry that I found attractive, it was more to the travel, and working internationally. I heard many stories like that. I just find that quite interesting and fascinating, and it got me thinking, perhaps I would like to get involved in the oil and gas industry as well. So I think that’s where I kind of got that idea of geology in my head – was that there was interesting work to be done, and also kind of fed my desire to learn about how the world was developed. That led me to do the subjects at school, and then it brought me to university and study geology.

BMR: Where did you study?

DM: I studied at the University of Glasgow. I did the undergraduate in Geology there, and then I did a Masters at Durham University.

BMR: Was there any professor or colleague who influenced in your pathway, during the university time?

DM: In the university period no, not so much. I mean, I had obviously a lot of respect for my lecturers and people like that. But it’s difficult for me to identify any one person in that time, I’ve already been set on the course earlier than that. I think that when I was a young teenager and I talked to this family friend, that’s what set me on that course. Then, when I went to university, it was more like a case of, I’m heading this way and I don’t know later what to do. So yeah, I had a good time at university, and enjoyed my subjects, but I wouldn’t say that I was influenced at that point. I think it was much earlier than that.

BMR: And so, what led you to the ocean?

DM: As I learned more about geology, the part that really interested me the most was the tools that you use to understand the geology. So, obviously the main tool that geologists use are their eyes. They go into the field, touch the rocks, and they observe and record things. But what I was interested in was the instruments that could help us. And that got me interested in geophysics. So, using geophysical methods to image and understand the Earth. And, of course, seismic imaging offshore as well as the drilling. I think that, this idea that you could image large parts of the Earth, and particularly sub-surface, I just find it fascinating. And when you can do it 3D, in three dimensions, it really got me interested. So yeah, it was this idea that you could go exploring at sea, and that the geology under the sea, using this tools, went beyond just using your eyes. I thought it was really quite compelling.

BMR: That’s also something that I find really attractive about marine geosciences. There’s this mass of water and you need to work with that, in trying to see what lays beneath. So what was the state of the art of technologies and the field of marine geosciences when you started?

DM: So when I started, I started in a job at the British Geological Survey. I was, actually, originally a hydrocarbons geoscientist. I’m now a marine geoscientist. But when I started, I was a hydrocarbons geoscientist. And the tools that we used, had been used in the oil and gas industry for decades. They haven’t really changed that much, throughout the eighties and into the nineties. Obviously the sensitivity of the hydrophones got better, and the processing part of computers obviously added a lot more capability there. But the fundamental techniques, I don’t think that they have changed that much. So the state of the art was that, yeah, deep drilling was happening – in the early days of the Ocean Drilling Program was happening through the time when I was growing up. So there was that kind of history there, when I started. At the BGS we were using drillships to do some sampling on the UK continental shelf, so I was learning a lot about how to sample the sub-seafloor, and how to drill those wells, again, using technology from the oil and gas industry. So, that’s where things were when I started working as a geoscientist.

BMR: What was your first offshore expedition, then?

DM: My first offshore experience wasn’t in fact an IODP expedition. It was a research cruise for the British Geological Survey. It was a geophysics cruise. We were out in the North Atlantic, collecting seismic data with a view to going back there and drilling somewhere to understand how the margin had evolved. I think that’s where my interest in drilling really got going, because I could see that collecting the seismic data was just a first step to understanding what the geology over there was. And to fully understand what the geology was like, you have to sample, you’ve got to get physical samples out of the seabed. And that would be the next step. I never actually went on a sampling cruise, but at the British Geological Survey was always geophysics cruises. The sampling experience would come later, when I joined IODP. So I think I did three cruises with the British Geological Survey, collecting geophysics from the UK. That, then, set the scene for the interest I’d have later in drilling.

BMR: Now that you mention your early years in the Geological Survey, I had other conversations with people who explained me that the things you learned at the university and then the things that you did in geological surveys or private companies had nothing to do. So I was just wondering, what kind of things did you learn, in your first years at the BGS?

DM: In the first years at the BGS, I did a lot of interpreting of the seismic data that were collected. At university, we had done some exercises looking at seismic data, then we had to interpret it. And all of a sudden, at the BGS, I was presented with these huge data sets. Kilometers, hundreds of thousands of kilometers of seismic data had to be looked at. And you were given the time to work with them because we had a deadline to produce a report for the BGS. So you had to manage your time, you had to work out what detail I’m going to interpret in the seismic data. You do want to spend ages doing it in detail, but you very quickly learned that you can’t. You have to do the best job you can in the time available. So I think that’s something that I learned at the BGS is that, you know, I’m not applying my geological knowledge to a job, and you can’t spend forever doing it. You have to focus on the job at hand so that you can complete it, move on to the next task. And there are other people relying on you to get that interpretation done. It’s not just for you or for you learning. It’s part of a workflow. And if you don’t do it in time, then you’re potentially holding other things up. So I think this kind of applying the knowledge and applying my skills within time skills was something quite new and different to what I did at University.

At University the projects you do – you are kind of managing your own time and timescales, but at the BGS, you’re working in a bigger team and you have to watch more to those timescales. So I think that managing time and also getting to grips with the tools, the software… Learning how to do things efficiently. And yeah, through time, you get more efficient at your job, and that means that you can maybe spend a bit more time interpreting. Those are the kind of things I learned, then.

BMR: It sounds very different from the way of working at university, like being in a PhD or a postdoc position, time is not usually a strong constraint, and you don’t need to, you know, rely on a team that much.

DM: Yeah.

BMR: So just to have some more context, what kind of things was the BGS doing? I mean, what were these seismic profiles for?

DM: This was to understand the evolution of the Northwest European margins. We were actually sponsored by oil industry to understand the opening of the North Atlantic, how the sub-basins around the North Atlantic developed through time, because they could have been hydrocarbon targets. So we were given some sponsorship money by the oil industry to do science, to work out the evolution of this area. So the seismic data was collected across thousands of kilometers, we would then map out the basins – how deep and how old are they? What kind of sediment infill do they have? And then, we could start to apply our knowledge about the maturation of oil. Is there a source there? Is there trap there? So, what if all the building blocks for a hydrocarbon province are there? And that was really good, because I felt that we were doing applied geoscience for hydrocarbon work, but we were also learning just pure, you know, generating new scientific knowledge about the UK continental shelf. So it was a very, a very useful thing to do.

BMR: Did you have any kind of exchange or collaboration with scientists at this point?

DM: Yes, we did. We had also internal collaborations with other scientists at the BGS, but there were a lot of researchers from across Europe working along that margin, particularly in Ireland and in Norway. Of course, they are the countries that are sitting along that margin, and they too were very interested in understanding the evolution of the Northwest European margin. So yeah, we worked with other geological surveys in Norway and also in Ireland, too.

BMR: Before asking you about ECORD and your path in scientific ocean drilling, I’d like to know why you decided to go to the BGS instead of just… Staying in academia, as a geologist?

DM: Very early at university, I understood in myself that I wanted to not be a pure researcher. I wanted to work for a company. In fact, my first job before going to the BGS – I had it for about nine months – it was a geophysics job. It was processing seismic data for the oil industry. And I found out in that time that perhaps I missed the research element even so, I thought in my mind, I just wanted to work for a company. I did miss the research. And then, this job advert appeared for the BGS. It was a bit of both, we could do some industry work, but we could also do some scientific research at the same time. That’s quite a unique position. The BGS is almost like a bridge between academia and industry, and it kind of sits in both camps. So I applied for the job and learned more about it… In the end, it turned out to be the perfect job for me, because I could do some research, but I could also do applied geology, as well. So that was a very nice job to get.

BMR: So just for me to understand it, is it a more stable job than academia?

DM: Yes, I think it probably is. It’s certainly more stable than industry, for sure. At the BGS, with a government funded organization, there is an element of job security that comes with that. Also, I think, in terms of pressure to produce novel research that you have in academia is not so high, but we’re a geological survey. So we have a kind of public remit to generate geological knowledge for the UK, on behalf of the UK. And that means that a lot of the work at the BGS is funded by government. So we’re not  constantly applying for grants. We can apply for grants, but it’s not the only way that we can get funded. So there is some government money that comes in. Combine that with some industry sponsorship money, and you can actually achieve a lot, with that. So yeah, it probably is a little bit more certain, has more certainty to it that the purely academic areas of work.

Right, so you don’t need to be applying for other positions, looking for a permanent position, asking for more money… But also it surprises me that you say that it’s more stable than industry. I mean, when I think about offshore industries, I think about private companies where you can just stay there for a long time. I guess you mean that, you know, as oil price changes, companies sometimes…

DM: Correct. I mean, certainly in the hydrocarbon industry there are boom and bust cycles, and companies will expand and contract following those cycles. I think a lot of people in the industry, like you say, they are safe in their jobs and you can stay with a company for many years. But there’s also some roles that can be disposed of when they don’t need them anymore. And then they build it back up again. I know a lot of colleagues and friends who are in the oil industry, and you hear stories about job losses and then recruitment falling after that. So, yeah, it’s not as certain, I think, that maybe people believe.

BMR: Let’s move to scientific ocean drilling. As far as I know, you first got involved in ECORD probably towards the mid-nineties?

DM: No, it was later than that. I joined the BGS in 2001 and I got involved in ECORD in 2004.

BMR: How did that happen?

DM: That’s a good question, actually. IODP started in 2003 and, at that time, the BGS had won a contract to be the operator for ECORD (European Consortium of Ocean Research Drilling). And I wasn’t part of that process of winning that contract, but my colleagues at the BGS were. After the contract was won, they were looking for staff to do the work. So my boss at the time, he approached me he said, “Oh, we’ve just won this contract to do scientific ocean drilling on behalf of IODP. What do you think about it? You could become a –” we called them staff scientists, at that time. The role of staff scientist was explained to me: that you go offshore, you coordinate an international science party, you oversee some of the drilling… And I thought, “oh, yes”, because I enjoyed going offshore on the geophysics cruises, this was another way of doing geology, which was the actual drilling. So I jumped at the chance. I said, “yeah, absolutely. I want to get involved”. And then it was revealed to me that the first project I’d be working on would be in the Arctic. So here we are. “We have some scientific ocean drilling happening in the Arctic, very close to the North Pole. Do you want to get involved?” Of course I was going to get involved. So that’s how it started. So I didn’t go looking for it, but it was my colleagues at the BGS who identified me as somebody who might enjoy it and be quite good at it. So that’s how I came across it.

BMR: How was your first experience like? What do you remember about that Arctic expedition?

DM: It was a fantastic experience, but it was also a baptism of fire.

BMR: What?

DM: It was a baptism of fire. So that’s when, you know, you learn something new and there’s a very steep learning curve. It was my first IODP expedition, so I had to learn a lot about IODP, and how science parties work, and minimum measurements, and all the publications… Everything that goes with IODP. But it was also the first mission specific platform expedition, as well. So there was a lot of – even for people who were familiar with IODP or with ODP,  this was new to them as well. So there was also a learning curve for everyone.

For me, it was like a double learning curve. I just I remember that it was very exciting, but it was also very challenging as well, because I think a lot of people who were involved in the project had a lot of experience from the Ocean Drilling Program, and how things were done, and how ocean drilling looked; and how does work the methods, the procedures… And all of a sudden, now we have this new MSP model appeared with a new operator, which is the British Geological Survey, with new staff, like me getting involved. So it’s a lot of new things all coming together at once. That made it quite… You know, there’s a lot of thinking on the fly. There’s a lot of troubleshooting, problem solving… But in the end, it was a very successful expedition. And I think it set the scene for the MSP successes that we would have after that.

BMR: At that time, you had previous experience in surveys onboard for the BGS, but this was for pure science. So, what kind of differences did you find, between those two types of expeditions?

DM: I think the biggest difference, moving in into the IODP – I was basically moving from data acquisition and research, to more into science coordination roles. So IODP, for us, for the BGS and for myself, was more about project management, coordinating a science team. I was helping other scientists achieve their science. It wasn’t necessarily my science, although I was very interested in it. It was more of a facilitation role. So I think that that was what was different, that I was, helping the scientific team. They had their needs, and I tried my best to meet their needs. I also had to uphold the principles of IODP, as well, and that was different. It was science coordination, rather than research. That was the biggest difference. But I really enjoyed that, because working with the best scientists in their field, you really learn a lot from them. They’re super knowledgeable. And just being part of that, a part of their, I guess, scientific journey… You can become part of that, and I just find that quite rewarding.

BMR: It is. And it’s a kind of very united community. You mentioned that you were not directly involved in the BGS entering into the bid for being the ECORD science operator but in any case, maybe you know why the BGS was selected for that role? I have no idea of how the process work, who were the actors, their relationships…

DM: When ECORD was looking for a new operator to implement these expeditions, there was an open call that went out to the community asking for institutes or consortium of institutes to get together and prepare a bid. The BGS teamed up with the University of Bremen and the University of Leicester as a partnership  to answer this call. The part that the BGS contributed to this partnership was marine operations. So there was a marine operations group at the British Geological Survey, and they had drilling experience, geophysics experience, and offshore logistics experience; and also research experience, as well. I think that combination of experience was quite unique, at the time. So that, I think, led to our success in winning the bid. Of course, our partners also brought in the experience, too, and that also contributed to the reason why our partnership was chosen. But certainly the marine operations experience, I think, was the strength on why we were selected.

BMR: Who made the selection?

DM: I don’t know. I don’t know exactly, but ECORD would have had a review panel or an assessment panel, something like that, independent of all the bidders, who would score or evaluate the bidders and then make a choice.

BMR: Was it for the entire ten year period?

DM: Yes, it was for the ten year period. And then, we were renewed at the end of the first IODP for the next phase of IODP.

BMR: So, from then onwards, one of your roles became acquiring the platforms, if I understood it correctly.

DM: That’s right, yeah. So when I first walked in IODP, like I said, I was the staff scientist coordinating the science teams. I did that from 2004 to 2010, so for six years. Then, in 2010, my boss retired. He’s the same boss that got me involved. But before his retirement, I had been shadowing him for a number of years… Looking at the management that went on behind the scenes. I was doing a lot of tasks on the management side, so when he retired, I basically stepped into his shoes and starting managing ESO (ECORD Science Operator). Although I had been involved a little bit in selecting platforms, at that point when I took over the management, I really became heavily involved with other colleagues in ESO. That was really interesting for me, because that was a whole new dimension to things that I hadn’t really experienced before. You know, contracting platforms is one of the most costly elements of MSP expeditions. It’s where the bulk of the money goes, and making the right choice is essential to achieve the science. So it’s a very responsible task. At first I thought it was quite a daunting task, but now I quite enjoy doing it. It’s quite a task, but it’s good.

BMR: What’s the most challenging of the process? And how does the relationship with the industry works, to acquire a platform?

DM: The process we follow to get a platform is that we… Because we are spending public money, we can’t just choose a contractor. We have to advertise it across the global market. And then the contractors bid into us. They submit proposals independent for the opportunity and then we, as ESO, evaluate those proposals. So, in the lead up, we call them tender calls or request for proposals, and before we open up a call for proposals, we will informally speak to potential contractors about the feasibility of projects and get some estimated costs. Find out if we can actually propose a sensible budget to ECORD to get the funding. Once EORD has decided that they want to do an expedition and they’re willing to fund it, that’s when we open up a call for proposals.

The first stage of opening that call is producing a specification of what we want to do. That’s based on the proposal that the scientists write: where we’re going? how deep are we going to drill? how long do you need to ship for? do we need any special capability, like icebreaking? what type of platform might work? It all goes down in the specification. Then, that gets released to the global market, and we ask the suppliers to bid in for that. Once we’ve assessed the bids – and we have a very strict scoring mechanism – we look at cost. So, suppliers who are very expensive going to lower the score; suppliers who are cheaper get a higher score. But it’s not as simple as that. We also look at the technical quality, how well can they drill. And we also apply our scoring to that, as well. So it may not be the cheapest, who wins the bid; it’s the person that can get offered the best balance between value for money and technical quality. Then we nominate a contractor based on that and sign a contract with them. So the whole process can take several months to go through that, including the kind of scoping that comes before that. It can actually be a couple of years.

BMR: Wow. Is there any difference in the process for acquiring a platform for scientific drilling and other types of survey that the BGS does?

DM: Yes. Drilling platforms are very expensive to hire. We’re talking about several millions of dollars per project. And that puts that procurement in a bracket, which there are many rules attached to how you can do it. You can’t just walk out and buy or hired a Joe ship. You’ve got to go through a very strict process. For a lot of the other services that the BGS contracts people in for, the lower values, so there’s a little bit more flexibility in how you follow that process. And the number of approvals you need are less.

But for drillships, we’re spending huge amounts of money. Then, yes, there’s a very particular process that we have to follow. So, that requires extra support that we get from the UK government. In fact, they can help us with that procurement exercise, because at the end of the day, it’s public money and there needs to be oversight on how we actually procure these high value contracts.

BMR: When you say public money, are you referring to the money that ECORD provides for that?

DM: That’s right.

BMR: Not public from the UK, but public from ECORD.

DM: I use the term public funds to describe all the money that comes into ECORD from all the members, and that money comes from science foundations, of governments, sometimes from institutes. But generally, the money is taxpayers’ money. So it’s public funds. Then we have an obligation to spend that wisely and to get the best value for money.

BMR: Let me go a bit back in time, to the start of the Mission Specific Platform model. I’m just thinking that this was a new model in which scientists would require a drilling platform from the industry, private company… Whatever. What was the reaction of the companies that offered platforms? Because as far as I understand, for the first time, they were going to offer their platforms for science, and the results were to be published, and that was a different working model than the one they were used to.

DM: I think that the reaction of industry at the time was really positive. First of all, they saw this as a new business stream that they could tap into. I think they were hoping there would be many, many expeditions where they could provide platforms; but in the end it was, you know, one every couple of years, so it wasn’t a huge part of the business.

But I think that the part that really attracted them was that they could contribute to generating new scientific knowledge. This is a different product that they were contributing to. I think a lot of them liked the idea of being attached to that. I mean, this is the early 2000s, oil companies and companies that service the oil industry were losing some love from the general public because of the fossil fuel and the carbon crisis and emissions and things like that. I think they were looking for ways to maybe improve their image. And actually contributing to scientific ocean drilling, which was investigating past climate change – or one of the objectives was investing past climate change – I think was very attractive to them. They were very happy to be involved. Specifically, the drilling crews that we interacted with; they saw this as a new way of working. They really enjoyed working with the scientists because they could learn so much about the geology. Whereas with their usual work, it was very much like… we want you to generate this data or this core for a business need, and has to be done as soon as possible. And there wasn’t really that same opportunity to really understand what it was being done in terms of geology. But working with the IODP scientists, I think it just opened up this whole new world to them. I think they were very eager to get involved. So, yeah… In those days, we didn’t really struggle to find suppliers. They were all willing and ready to come forward.

BMR: You just said that at that time you didn’t struggle to get suppliers – how about now?

DM: Yeah, I think this is true; I think the challenge of securing platforms from industry has got harder. There’s many reasons for that. I think one reason is that the cost of platforms obviously goes up and down, as well. There’s a boom and bust cycle. And with offshore work, also possibly for companies, they soon learned that IODP expeditions are weird (laughs). They’re very strange. They’re often in very strange parts of the world – quite remote parts of the world. They have very specific needs. The platforms have very specific needs, because we have to take many scientists with us, we have to have our scientific labs on board… And yeah, we are also drilling in areas where very little drilling has happened before. And that is risky for a company, as well.

So yeah, there were elements about expeditions – although it was very exciting new work for them and they could see the kind of public relations benefit – I think they also realized that the projects are a little bit strange, and also the business for them was not so regular. You can imagine, if you’re a company and you have an IODP opportunity there, a one-off IODP opportunity, or you have a repeated business with your familiar client, you’re going to go with the repeated business with your familiar client. It has to be something quite compelling about the IODP work for them to kind of take that. So I think that’s one of the reasons why, as well. But certainly… Market forces, for instance, the explosion in renewable sector, windfarm development, that’s taken a lot of infrastructure, and drilling crews, and ships, and very recently it’s quite difficult to find platforms.

BMR: I see what you say. The point of the MSPs is that IODP can have access to different kinds of technical capabilities but of course, not every company offers all the range of techniques, capabilities. So you end up going for each expedition to one different provider.

DM: Yes.

BMR: So there’s no stability for them, so to speak. You started in a managing position in the Science Operator around the turn from IODP 1 to IODP 2. So what kind of things did you have to do, in order to prepare the new program? What was different between both programs?

DM: In the first ten years, from 2004 to 2013, the role of MSPs was to fill the gaps left behind by Chikyu and the JOIDES Resolution. So we were looking in ice covered seas, shallow water… things like that, but still using drillships. So, using geotechnical drill ships. I think that a big change that happen for the following ten years, from 2013 to 2023, was that there was a kind of acceptance in the community, or a desire in the community, to think about alternative coring methods. So, not just rig based drilling but also seafloor drills, giant piston coring… I remember, in the early twenty-tens, giving many presentations to the community about, well, you know, we don’t always have to drill from a rig. We can use other coring tools as well, under the IODP program. And that was quite a change.

Not everyone supported that change, at the time. There was a train of thought that, IODP is for deep drilling because that’s expensive. And the way it can be achieved is everyone clubbing together and pulling funds and doing that. There was this idea that seafloor drilling and joint piston coring, “well, that can be done by nations individually. It doesn’t require an international collaboration to achieve that”. So there was a little bit of skepticism, for good reason, about these alternative coring methods. But as you know, as budgets shrunk, it became more important to find ways of achieving sub-seabed sampling with less money, with less resources. And one way of doing that was to use smaller scale coring technologies, because if you use giant piston coring or seafloor drills, you can then use a smaller vessel, or a research vessel. And if it can be a research vessel, then that can be provided by a country. You don’t have to hire that, so the cost of accessing the sub-seabed, in some circumstances, really fall, and it became something quite attractive. I think that’s what, in the end, won the argument of why these alternative coring technologies could be used in IODP. I think our first seafloor drilling expedition was in 2015. So yeah, by that time, in the mid-twenty tens, we were already starting to use alternative coring technologies, and that was a huge change from the previous ten years.

BMR: Now we’re approaching the end of IODP two and if I understood it well, you said that it was a positive change, that you opened up the range of drilling activities that MSP can do. But my question is, looking back in time now, is there something that you now think, we should have done it different, we should have taken a different path here…?

DM: That’s a really good question. I think there are things that we could have done differently – whether it would have led to an improvement or not, I don’t know. I’ll give you an example. One challenge we have with the MSPs is their one-off nature. They are assembled, we do the expedition, then disassembled, and we move on.  Then, the next project uses a different ship, different drill rig, different drill team, different company… So it’s another one-off expedition. And that’s actually quite expensive to do, because you’re mobilizing and demobilizing each time, and you lose that economy of scale. So if you have a dedicated drillship, like the JOIDES Resolution, you can do back to back expeditions. You can maintain the knowledge and experience; you can be super-efficient… And that economy of scale, we couldn’t do with MSPs because of the way it was set up.

So, maybe one thing that we could have done differently was try to cluster expeditions, and try and use the same drillship and the same drilling technology for multiple expeditions back to back. Then, you’re starting to kind of emulate the JOIDES Resolution model… But then you lose the flexibility that you have with the MSPs, which is that you can go where you need to go, and you’re not restricted by a ship track… So yeah, regional clustering or technological clustering could have maybe been achieved, in the previous programs. And for the new program, I think it’s something that  is going to be looked at more closely. There are challenges with that. And there are advantages. Whether or not it leads to a better outcome, I’m not sure. It’s a different way, but whether it’s hard to happen or with little improvement, I don’t know, I guess we’ll find out.

BMR: I guess this learning from the past is part of the nature of ocean drilling programs, in general, during all these years. Each program has something different from the previous ones that is built based on, you know, looking in retrospect. We change this and then we evaluate it. Going back to your position and roles, is there some skill or some kind of knowledge that you learned at the BGS that has been useful, or that you have applied to your roles in ECORD? And vice-versa.

DM: In my first years at the BGS I gained some offshore experience, so I learned about how to do research at sea as a scientist. And that’s everything from logistics to operating equipment, doing science at sea, interpreting… All that what was part of it. I think that equipped me for when I moved into IODP because, when I was working with a science team, I could see the project from their point of view – because they’re the science team, they’re the scientists doing the research. And I could imagine what that would be like because I’d been a researcher offshore myself. But now, I was a facilitator. So I think that helped a lot. Also, just having an awareness of drilling and the techniques – a lot of the work I did in my early days was based on hydrocarbons. I interpreted well logs, and I had to understand how those wells were drilled to understand the data… So I was starting to build this knowledge on drilling techniques even before I had got involved in IODP. I think that helped, as well, so that I could take that knowledge and apply it in IODP.

And another way around, what have I learned in IODP that I can take back to the BGS? Well, it’s definitely project management. Management of large scale projects is something that BGS does not do. It’s smaller teams, smaller objects, smaller budgets… Smaller everything. So actually, being part of these larger expeditions and helping to coordinate them, means that I can pretty much project manage many projects at the BGS. I got a really good project management experience with IODP that I don’t think I would have got solely from the BGS. So there’s definitely a big kind of experience exchange between the two.

BMR: Actually I also understand that the component of international cooperation in ocean drilling is much bigger than the one you get at the BGS.

DM: Yeah, that’s true. I mean, we did we did work with other researchers from other places, but not on this scale that we have here. But even just having those early relationships with other researchers, just got me used to the idea of working with other cultures, other scientists… And, you know, sometimes language barriers as well. You definitely meet that in IODP because you also have a very large international team. And it’s just good to have that awareness of – not everyone thinks like you, speaks like you, sounds like you… You have that kind of understanding, which is really useful when you’re dealing with the science party.

BMR: Has this international cooperation or the need to interact with international partners been a challenge at some point during your time at the BGS?

DM: No, no, not from a BGS’s point of view. One thing that strikes me about IODP is actually how well the international partners work together. I mean, these are big projects, there’s big budgets involved. There’s a lot at stake. And, you know, the fact that all these international partners have come together and created this unified program where the standards and the compatibility is the same across a program, I think is absolutely amazing. All the planning meetings have been to involve these partners, they’ve always run extremely well. So I wouldn’t say that there’s been any challenges.

If there are any challenges is more recently, as the program changes and the membership changes. We’re now going from a unified program to individual programs, there’s new discussions to be had with our partners. And that’s… That’s different from what it was before. But I think the good relationships we’ve built up through time will survive this period. And whatever happens next, I’m sure certain that we’ll still have good relationships with all our partners going forward. So no, I don’t think there hasn’t really been any huge challenges on that front.

BMR: How do you see the future, especially from your perspective, providing MSPs?

DM: I think it’s really exciting that there’s a new focus on our MSPs because the JOIDES Resolution will not be available in IODP³. MSPs have to make up some of the shortfall, if you like, but that’s really difficult because the budgets are probably not available to do the same number of expeditions that the JR did. I So going forward, I think the MSP concept will serve us well for the next few years, until we work out what comes next properly. We can rely on MSPs to continue scientific ocean drilling, but longer term, I do think there is a need for a globally ranging dedicated scientific drilling vessel, operated by someone on behalf of an international program. MSPs are, were fantastic at filling in the gaps, but if you want to do six or seven expeditions a year, that’s difficult to do with MSPs alone. You need a dedicated vessel. So, in the future, I would like to see the multi-ship model come back, with MSPs having a role in filling the gaps. Whether we can have MSPs doing everything, I’m not so sure.

I’m also quite excited about the opportunities that technology are going to bring in terms of participation. In the early days, when I went to sea, there was no chance you had internet onboard. You might have a phone that you could occasionally phone home, or very slow email. But now, you have near broadband speeds at sea. And that opens up all kinds of opportunities for video exchanges; we can have scientists contributing to expeditions, participating, and they don’t have to be on the vessel, they can be onshore and have a continuous link to the vessel. They can receive data in near real time back ashore. That opens up all these opportunities for kind of hybrid expeditions, where people who maybe can’t sail because of disabilities or family reasons – there’s all kinds of reasons why people can’t sail. And now  you can include those people. So, inclusivity is really going to improve. I’m quite excited by that, I think that could really help. It might it will help us with selecting vessels, because we may not need to have so many scientists on board. We can have a smaller group of people representing IODP, getting the cores out of the seabed, doing some initial analysis, feeding that data back to the scientists; and it might mean there’s more choice in the vessel. So, I’m quite excited by what we can do with the technology.

BMR: Thinking about budget… I know that budget has been a limitation for IODP. So, maybe it’s a dumb question, but is there a way to pursue this big international program with budgets that are kind of shrinking? Because, of course, it would be ideal to have the budget that we want or that we’d applied for. But the reality is that for many years, budget has been changing, if I got it right. So what’s your perspective on this, given that you’re the one dealing, looking at the prices of the platforms.

DM: Our budgets have effectively been shrinking, as you see, over many years. But we’ve still managed to achieve expeditions. Like I explained before, we found cheaper ways of running expeditions with different coring technologies. And I think as long as we are producing expeditions and producing new data, the problem of budgets probably won’t go away. I think… If we get to a point where the budgets just become too small to actually do any scientific drilling, at that point there will be a kind of wake up moment and people will realize, “we have to do something drastic here to rebuild those budgets so we can do scientific ocean drilling on a scale that we need it to do”. But at the moment, in a way, we’re kind of limping along, and we’re making do with the budgets, and we’re achieving something. And as long as we’re achieving, I think those budgets aren’t going to change. But as soon as we stop achieving, I think then there will be a lot of reflection on how we can get this budget back up again. There could be a lot of work, because you’ve got to convince science funders, philanthropists… Anyone who has significant funds. You’re gonna have to make a strong case for scientific ocean drilling. And I think we can. I think we can make a stronger case in the future than we are currently for funding. But yeah, I think it will become a point where we have to seriously talk about the elephant in the room, which is the budgets are not high enough for what we want to achieve.

BMR: In which sense… Do you have an example on how to make a bigger point? In which sense are you saying it?

DM: We know of other science programs that are very successful at winning big funding from governments. We look at particle physics, and space, and things like that, and they get a lot of money for scientific research. I think scientific ocean drilling has not been that successful at making that kind of case that we’re looking back in time, we’re looking at climate change records, and a lot of objectives that scientific ocean drilling achieves is very relevant to our future. I think that we’re getting better at making that message,  but it doesn’t seem to be landing in the right way to secure that bigger funding. It just needs a bit – maybe another rethink about exactly how we coach that message,  because I think it’s a powerful message, and I think we can make it better. I don’t know exactly how that can be done, but I feel it should be done.

BMR: Of course this is one of the ongoing discussions.

DM: Yeah. Yeah.

BMR: It has always been an open question of how to address attention, how to show the things we are doing in a more convincing way. Let me just one more question, about your current job. How do you balance your responsibilities at the BGS and your role at ECORD? Is there overlapping?

DM: No, I wouldn’t say there’s a lot of overlap, but the BGS has been very good at giving me the time to take part in IODP. When the BGS won the contract to be the operator, there’s also an obligation on the BGS to provide staff to fulfill that role. So it wasn’t any problem with giving me plenty of time. When I first started with IODP, I would say maybe 50% of my time was with ocean drilling and the other 50% was on BGS work. Through the years, that balance has shifted. Actually, now it’s about 100% on IODP – not quite. I still do a few things for the BGS, but it’s nearly 100%. But certainly, when I took over the management, it then became a much bigger proportion. But the BGS is very happy for me to do that. For the BGS it’s a very visible project. But, you know, there’s a lot of responsibility. There’s a lot of good image for the BGS when we have successful expeditions, so they’re quite happy to give me the time to get involved. So, yeah, there’s never been any conflict at the BGS in terms of my time.

BMR: What will be your future role now in the new IODP³? Are you continuing in this position?

DM: Yes, I mean, I really enjoy this work and I could do it for another, for many decades. So as long as ECORD wants the BGS to be part of their operator, then I think the BGS is happy to do it. And I’m happy to do it with the BGS. So yeah, I’m looking forward to being involved for the next ten years. Who knows, at some point ECORD might decide that they need to reevaluate who their operator is, and there might be another competition for the role at some point in the future. And I’m pretty sure the BGS and its partners will put a new bid, and I’d like to think I’d be part of designing that response to that call. But we’ll see. We’ll see what ECORD wants to do. But for the moment, they seem pretty happy with what they’re getting from us. And I’m happy with what I’m providing for them. So, we’ll see, we’ll see how it goes. But yeah, I quite fancy sticking with IODP for a good while the longer.

BMR: That’s great to hear. Well, thank you very much.

DM: You’re very welcome.