James Allan

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is December 13. We are at Moscone Center, in San Francisco. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius postdoctoral researcher at JAMSTEC. Today I am with Jamie Allan. Thank you very much. Can you please introduce yourself? Say your name, current affiliation and current role.

Jamie Allan (JA): My name is Jamie Allan. I’m a program director of the Ocean Drilling Program at National Science Foundation.

BMR: First of all, I would like to know, where did you grow up? How was your childhood?

JA: I grew up in a suburb of Washington D.C., Falls Church, Virginia. And I live in that same house right now. I went to the University of Virginia, got a degree in environmental sciences in 1978, and then went to the University of California Berkeley and got a PhD in Geology in 1984. And originally I was a land geologist, working on volcanoes, tectonics… And then in a series of post-docs, I ended up becoming marine geologist. And somehow I was convinced to vie for a staff scientist job at Texas A&M. Joined Texas A&M in 1989 as a staff scientist. And I’ve been associated with scientific drilling ever since.

BMR: And how did you get interested in geology?

JA: I started collecting rocks when I was about three years old.

BMR: Oh, wow.

JA: Yeah.

BMR: How did you first know about scientific ocean drilling?

JA: Well, in graduate school I knew about the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) and I was very interested in volcanic arcs, and some of the drilling in arcs that were identifying tectonic overpressures. I was very interested in those. So I started reading some of the DSDP volumes. That’s how I really first got to know about them. And then, as I developed as an igneous petrologist, I got more and more interested in the basalts erupted in the ocean ridges and some of the fundamental work that was describing the undersea basalts was done in the DSDP volumes, including creation of the terms used to describe them. Describe the textures, especially. So that’s where I became aware.

BMR: Did you know someone at the university, during your graduate studies, who was involved in scientific ocean drilling?

JA: Not really that much. I really wasn’t involved much with scientific ocean drilling until I actually started a job at Texas A&M. And I had gone out on an Alvin diving cruise with Dan Fornari, and he suggested that I apply for a Staff Scientist job with the Ocean Drilling Program. I was looking for a job as a petrologist and there weren’t many. I was at the University of British Columbia as a post-doc and as a lecturer at the time. And so I said, “okay, I’ll buy for this staff scientist job and see what it’s about.” I interviewed in the Fall of 1998 and somehow got the job and then started. And six weeks after I started, I was out in the Sea of Japan on the JOIDES Resolution on leg 127 and… then I started my long association with many Japanese scientists, which was one of the great benefits of my career.

My family has a long association with Japan. My father initially went to Japan as part of the Occupying Forces and then came back during the Korean War (1950), working for U.S. Army Intelligence as a geographer looking for airfields in China and northern Korea. He was originally doing a PhD in cultural geography in China, and because that was no longer possible for the communist takeover, he decided that he was going to switch his topic to cultural geography of Japan. So that was a big reason why he went over there. He traveled the length of Japan, shooting Kodachrome pictures of landscapes, people, festivals, etcetera. And these turned out to be quite valuable because there was no color processing in Japan until 1960. So these slides were donated to the University of Tokyo. That was pretty great. Then, my mother came to Tokyo in 1954, working for the CIA as an undercover agent. And before that, she was a code girl during World War Two. She was breaking Japanese codes (laughs) and she went over to the CIA and was keeping taps on Russian agents in Tokyo. And she met my father there. Then the two of them got engaged. So Japan has been important in my life. I grew up with Japanese art, Japanese food… I learned how to use chopsticks at about age four… So they were especially delighted when I had the chance to go back and work with Japan. And I love going to Japan. My language abilities are worse than terrible, even in English. And so I don’t speak much Japanese, but I always enjoy the people and the culture, and the traveling and the food.

BMR: Did you visit Japan being a kid?

JA: No. The first time I went to Japan was at the start of leg 127 at Tokyo Bay. That was the first time. I went up in Tokyo Tower, I was staying in Chiba Park, and… You know, (laughs) it was just a great time. It was good.

BMR: Do you remember your first experience on board? The people you met, the…?

JA: The food onboard the JOIDES Resolution (JR) was great, as I was used to having to cook simple food myself as a field geologist – on the JR, the cooks prepared delicious food in a real kitchen! And when I was younger, I was a lot skinnier. I was quite athletic but I ate, I like good food. The other thing is that they had a gym on board, there were tremendous science facilities, and there was a great sense of camaraderie. But I didn’t really know what I was getting into because I hadn’t been out to sea before. And I was really worried about, you know, having to enforce rules. So I was best man in a wedding right before I flew to the ship. I went into a barbershop after the wedding in Los Angeles. It was an old Navy barber. I said, “I’m going out to sea for two months. I need my haircut really short.” So he shaved my head. So I showed up on the JR (note: flew to Japan for Leg 127 just after getting the haircut), literally with this hair that’s one millimeter long. And I’m this lunatic saying, “you can’t drink. If you do, I’m going to beat the crap out of you or something,” you know? (laughs). And it just… The people saw me as this complete lunatic. And after I’d been on board for about two weeks, they figured out who I was. And, you know, I calmed down a little bit. So my experience was first, “the living is quite posh.” They would wash your clothes for you, and you work really hard and they’re great people. And there’s really cool stuff. So I really enjoyed, especially it’s where I got to know Kentaku Tamaki. He is a mentor of mine and just a really sweet, nice guy. Kiyoshi Suyehiro was co-chief on the associated leg 128 and we became a lifetime friends, too. So yeah, it was a great experience. I worked hard, but it was just a great experience. And then I had the chance to go back… Forty times, to Japan? I’ve been a lot of times. All over, you know, from Hokkaido to Okinawa. And I had the chance to experience many, many great, great times.

So one thing that I was really impressed by was the kindness and politeness of my Japanese colleagues. I think they helped me learn to tone it down a bit in my own professional career. To be a quieter, better listener… In particularly working with MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan) Liaisons, learning how to write better memos. They’re really good bureaucrats. I mean, much better than I was, coming from  this… [A] sort of firebrand scientist from Berkeley. So yeah, it really helped me mature, working with Japanese scientists, and involving many aspects of Japanese culture in terms of how I’d behave to the others.

BMR: At that time you were a stuff scientist at Texas A&M for ODP (Ocean Drilling Program).

JA: Yes.

BMR: What was your role?

JA: I was staff scientist for five expeditions. Then, after the first two… Well, essentially right after my third one, I was promoted into a management position. First Assistant Manager of Science Operations. Then I was Manager of Science Operations and then the new department Science Services. That was much larger, all the staff scientists, scientists, repositories, technicians, laboratories… were under my watch. And then, not to put it too overly specific, I had the chance to seek excellence elsewhere. Basically my old position was eliminated and reorganized, and it was a new position that I occupied while competing for it. And I didn’t get the job (laughs). In hindsight, I think that was a good thing because I was at odds with some of the directions the organization was taking. But it turned out to be really a good thing, because I think oftentimes when you’re forced to make change, you look at yourself and what you’re doing differently, and… There are opportunities for growth. In my case, I went to the National Science Foundation as a rotator with the Grants Program Association with the Ocean Drilling Program. Then, I was hired as a geology department chair for two years at Appalachian State University. And a few years in, my boss, Bruce Malfait, was promoted to reorganize the NSF in the Ocean Sciences Division. And his old job came open to me. That was the ideal job for me, and I had been very interested in staying in NSF when I was fighting for key positions and didn’t get them. But this time I got the job and I’ve been in this position since 2002. So long time. So yeah, so it was a good job, I would argue. I had the best job in NSF because I was with the Ocean Drilling Program and then with the IODP (Integrated Ocean Drilling Program) through a lot of really capable, smart people. I can honestly say that I was never the smartest person in the room. And that’s a good thing. You know, it’s not good being the smartest person in the room, (laughs) and I never was. So it was very stimulating, very broad, you know, rather than this narrow area of research where I was… And there was lots of great travel. The other aspect of it is, there was a lot of money involved and there was a lot of international trust funds that came in and were put in the bank. And by agreement, there was the interest earned on that account. People will associate it with management of ODP and IODP and NSF would travel. So I didn’t have the normal restrictions on international travel that other federal employees usually have. So I would argue it was the best job and stuff, certainly for a while. I know that some agreed with me because I was interviewed on a program called Best Jobs in the Federal Government (laughs) and I was interviewed on board the JOIDES Resolution while in port in Victoria, British Columbia, in Canada.

BMR: What was your initial motivation to move from science to scientific management?

JA: I’d been in it since 1992, so I was promoted in a management position within three years of joining the Ocean Drilling Program and I was still scientist. But you can make things happen as an administrator that you can’t otherwise, as a scientist. Your effect, you can have a positive effect that’s much greater. And, you know, I asked the same question in a… I was taking a training in project management that was led by a guy named Gary Sanders in Caltech who was the project manager for LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory. And I said, “well, how do you miss being an active scientist?”. He said, “well, I’m still involved in science. It’s exciting to be part of the broader effort and I have more effect.” And I’d like to think that I was a pretty good scientist, and I would like to think that I was a better administrator. But, you know, I’m.. Others might have differing opinions, (laughs) but it was certainly rewarding and so I don’t regret a decision I made in the early 2000 where I had young kids and I said, “okay, I can’t have this huge travel schedule. I can either be a father of my children or else I can still have this active research.” So I have to give up something. So I was just like more dormant, and I taught a little bit. I was a visiting professor at Kumamoto University in 2013 and taught classes. I think the last paper I worked on was published in like 2006… It’s been a while.

BMR: You mentioned that your boss when you were at NSF had been Bruce Malfait.

JA: Yeah, he was the one who hired me.

BMR: Bruce had been, as far as I know, involved in ODP since the beginning of program.

JA: I first met Bruce Malfait in 1986. He was Marine Geology and Geophysics Program Director, and he switched over shortly thereafter. That was like 1987. Bruce is a remarkable guy. Bruce really was the smartest guy in the room. Most of the time. He was like Buddha. Just sit in the back of the room and he would usually not say anything, but people would be looking what he did with his eyebrows. And when he was unhappy, you knew it. He usually didn’t have to say anything. He will look back and, “oh yeah, this would… better change course” (laughs). And when Bruce got up to say something, people really listened. And, you know, he’d get… I wasn’t like his, I just tried to be a little bit like him (laughs), but I was not like him. And I don’t play my cards nearly as close, I try… But I’m very open.

BMR: What did you learn from Bruce? In terms of managing such a big program.

JA: Bruce had tremendous respect for Japan, and that was something we would get together after he retired and sometimes get mad at me because, you know…  I learned to listen better, I think, from him; to think of things very broadly in their concept. The best thing I can say is, I’ll tell you a story. I had left NSF and I was co-chair with Eichi Kikawa of the Scientific Measurements Panel in the Advisory System of ODP. And I was really struggling over this issue, so I wrote Bruce for advice. I wrote him this four paragraph question, and he gave me an answer in about five words. And I was like, “Oh!”. That’s what Bruce did. He was very good at taking complex things and reducing them to their essence and getting at the real issue, and not be affected by secondary things. So I think that’s one thing he taught me, that I should look for what’s the real essence of the problem, and don’t get distracted by details that are, you know, maybe slightly contributory, but there aren’t the principal issues.

But I’ve had a lot of other mentors. I think a really important person was Rody Batiza who… Rody was my postdoc. Rody accepted me as a postdoc before I left Berkeley and I became a marine geologist. I learned how to drive a ship under Rody. Then I went to work with Rody again and he, actually we competed for the same job as a Marine Geology and Geophysics Program Director. He got the job instead of me, and then I went and got the job, the ODP job. And then, when Paul Dauphin – another great guy – retired, Rody got his job. So the two of us were working together. And when Bruce retired, Rody asked me, “well, are you going to apply to be the boss, the section head?”, and I said, “well, no, that would be weird. I’m used to you being my boss.” So Rody then was my boss for another nine years or so, and just a wonderful experience being able to work with him. It’s just a very warm and wonderful support. So I really wanted to give a shout out to Rody. Then the final, Bob Houtman, who replaced Rodey and who kind of inherited my colleague Tom Janacek and I. I had not talked about Tom. Tom, the most capable individual I’ve ever worked with. I was lucky to be in partnership with him managing the program at NSF. So Bob inherited us, just sort of we were dumped in his lap and he took us on with enthusiasm. He is ex-Navy Captain, Geology undergrad, but not otherwise a scientist. But I think he was instrumental in helping ensure the success of IODP.

BMR: When you entered the position at NSF, towards the end of ODP, you were preparing the transition [to IODP]. How was the landscape you found? How was the relationship with other institutions, countries, the scientists, the funding agencies…?

JA: The most interesting dynamic involved negotiating with ECORD (European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling). NSF and MEXT were working together, we had agreed to be the lead agencies. And ECORD was demanding to be treated as a full partner, as another lead agency, despite bringing far fewer resources to the table. What I remember is the strong NSF partnership with MEXT: ECORD would demand things and issuing non-negotiable demands to which we would politely say, “no, come back.” We did this three times in one day…but eventually it all worked out. There really were three lead agencies. The unfortunate thing is that all of us expected to have far more resources available than we actually did. And that’s a very involved topic as to why funding didn’t materialize. The best way that I can state the effects of it was that I presented a budget for authorization that had a total funding in 2013 of 113 million dollars for NSF for running the JR, for funding the Central Management Office, and funding US scientist participation in IODP. Despite this amount being authorized, our actual budget in 2013 was 56.2 million dollars. So less than half. This situation was identical in Europe, they had hoped to get EU (European Union) money and failed to get any more. And the situation was the same in Japan. I think Chikyu also turned out to be more expensive than envisioned to operate. So the first IODP had this very elaborated program structure that was dependent on this very high rich funding, let’s call it. I had an assistant director at NSF [who] called it “the Incredibly Opulent Drilling Program”, for the structure. So when you get less than half the funding of what you think you’re going to have, it is traumatic. And so the first IODP was not nearly as successful,  I think, as we like to think of it, because there weren’t the funds to operate nearly as much as we wanted to. We also had a challenge in getting authorized funds to convert the JR. The project to convert the JR for the new program stretched out over several years… Longer than planned. And it’s because we didn’t get the money from Congress in time to really start. So it was quite a challenge surviving, the first IODP, and we almost did… But… I think there was a recognition that the structure needed to radically change.

Nobody really understood the model very well. And I will say that the first lessons learned is… When the first time IODP was set up, there were two funding routes for each platform. The so-called Platform Operating Costs or POCs, and Science Operating Costs or SOCs. MEXT was supposed to supply the funds for Chikyu and NSF the POCS or platform costs. NSF was to supply the costs for the JR and Europe for MSPs, the Mission Specific Platforms. The Science Operating Costs were supposed to be co-mingled from contributions coming in out for NSF and then sent by contract to the Central Management Office, the IODP-MI, which then distributed them to the platforms. The idea with this is that the operators would then follow the instructions of what the Central Management Office would tell them to do. This was hopelessly naïve. It was, I would argue, deeply flawed in terms of a number of ways, in terms of defining things. The funding streams meant that the platform operators had two different bosses – IODP-MI and also each respective funding agency And the result of the first IODP is, nobody knew who was in charge. The scientists thought they’re in charge. They weren’t. IODP-MI thought they were in charge. They weren’t. Funding agencies thought they’re in charge, you know, or at least of the platforms. And they held the pull strings. So… If one eighth of your funding is coming from IODP-MI and 7/8 comes from MEXT, guess to whom you’re going to pay attention to the most? And so, this was… Then, you had also the MEXT liaison and I, every year had to figure out what was a SOC and what was a POC. And that is simple in concept of what’s a science cost or a platform cost, but it isn’t. Just as an example, in the logging subcontracts, you have… Part of what you do, you put down several charges to blow the pipe apart if we get stacked. Okay, that’s a platform cost. But the logging contract itself is a science cost. So you have to extract that out. So you just have this ridiculous complexity. It ultimately was fixed actually by US Congress, telling NSF that you had to account for every penny that was being used to run a facility [?] cost. And I couldn’t do that because I was mixing all these funds out. Then, there were the funds from two different contracts which were mixed up, you know, so you had… We could no longer do that. So I was able to say “no more SOC/POC, and all the funding going to the JOIDES Resolution has to come just from the NSF.” So we still had funding of much of the science costs going to the Central Management Office to the IODP-MI. But the costs of actually running the platform then became directly funded by the funding agencies.

So that, to me, is the first lesson that you need to learn when you’re building a program, an international program: it’s got to be simple. You’ve got to be able to follow the money easily. And it’s got to be very clear who is in charge. The case of setting science priorities and the ship track, and deciding what science you’re going to do, clearly it’s a science community job. The fiduciary control is the job of funding agencies, and the approval… So the way it works, I can just, I’ll let Nobu [Eguchi] and others talk about what they do for their own platforms, but for the JOIDES Resolution, now we have a Facility Board which approves the program plan and the ship track. But NSF actually has final approval of the budget and that program. So that was a really big lesson, I think, to keep things simple. The funding paths simple and… We, I think, greatly simplified for the second IODP (International Ocean Discovery Program). We got rid of coordinating office, this management office, because we also learned that the laws of different nations are important and the cultural differences between nations are very important. We had a problem with the US contract having an office in Japan, telling a Japanese Government entity what to do. Well, that really hasn’t worked out well (laughs), so we had to move away from that. So essentially the second IODP is really, it’s a cooperative program, it’s really three independent programs that are governed by a common set of principles, where we try to align our procedures and processes as much as possible so it looks seamless. It looks like a single program. But it results in a lot of confusion because many people say, “well, IODP says this.” Well, there’s no IODP that way. Before, there was a Central Management Office that could make us an official statement on behalf of the international program. That’s not true now. But the advantage of the way we have it – it’s far cheaper to run. And this facility board model has worked out pretty well. I’ll just say a little bit about that.

We realized that we needed to improve how the JR was run, so started examining how other NSF supported facilities were managed. I think this is really important that you don’t, as good as you may be, you never get the sense that you’re better than anybody else and you can’t learn from anybody else. So we looked at how other facilities were being run and we looked in particular at a program that was quite similar to IODP. This is the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, or ALMA, in Chile. Here they had a whole array of radio telescopes that 40% were supplied by the United States, 40% by Europe and 20% by Japan. It’s actually very similar. And because you needed a coordinating body, you had the ALMA Board. The idea is everybody’s on the Board, the funding agencies, the scientists and the operator are on the Board. So you can collectively make policies and procedures. You don’t have this… You’re here kind of doing relationships. And it really helped with who’s in charge. Well, we’re all in charge. So we adopted this and it actually works really well. We have a JOIDES Resolution Facility Board headed by scientists with five international scientists on it, and then funding agency representatives putting NSF on it and the offering. You collectively make decisions and policies. The science priorities are set by the scientists on the Board, but otherwise we look at things together and this helps avoid a lot of problems. In the case of the JR, it did help reduce costs by probably… Certainly 20% or even 30% over what it was during the first IODP. It was much more effective in how the ship was driven. And I think a much better way in terms of prioritizing the science to be done. In fact, recognizing that there are regional problems where you would spend a lot of time in a region with doing related science rather than driving the ship back and forth across the Pacific and burning up a lot of fuel and money, going from one to another for science that’s considered marginally better. So yeah, I think that was a big lesson, too. That’s the lesson number two, that you need to have everybody work together in cooperation and jointly making decisions. Everybody’s got to have a stake and you make better decisions. And those are really my two biggest lessons from this.

The funding issue, the third issue I think is also important, and that is: there’s a lot of reasons why nations provide drilling platforms. One of them is science. Let’s be honest, one of them is science. There are national interests of showing leadership, global leadership, that are important; and there are also reasons that you may want to support certain aspects of your economy. And, you know, this is where the quandary where we are now, globally’ there’s really only enough money to run one part. But the political interests in terms of identities, whether Europe, United States or Japanese identity, the wish for leadership, makes that impossible to do now. It means that… that’s the change in the US. We can’t we can’t afford to run our ship anymore… We need to pivot more towards doing a US oriented program. Because we’ll lose our money otherwise. So I think those are the three lessons… And I think it’s important to recognize the political aspects. And that’s okay. I mean… I will add two to that. I don’t think the science community understands that the Ocean Drilling Program almost mark the end of scientific ocean drilling. It was a wished that ended that. And in general terms, in the United States it very well might have happened if it hadn’t been for Chikyu. Yeah. So what Chikyu did is, it offered the possibility of something modern and grander and, you know, maybe just a little bit of international competition too, and it provided a different framework. Then, with the Europeans coming on board, focusing, you know, with a focus on doing shallow water drilling and drilling at high latitudes, that the big drillships couldn’t do, it provided a powerful case to continue with scientific ocean drilling. And that was good for another twenty years. But if there hadn’t been these other platforms, particularly the Chikyu, I don’t think that there would have been a continuation in the United States. At least that’s my understanding when I was there at the time. I remember talking with Joe Bordogna, who was Deputy Director of NSF, so I heard it from the horse’s mouth (laughs). I won’t stick any more words at his mouth, but anyway…

BMR: I would like you to expand a bit more on this last point about, that there are more interests at play than the scientific ones, and I especially would like to hear from your experience, since you are a scientist who has been mediating for many years between the US government and national agencies and scientists.

JA: Right. The reason why there’s international cooperation is because of the interest of both countries, or multiple countries, that are collaborating. The basis for this was laid out very well in a report to NSF a few years ago. There are three important things, and I’ll try to remember them: Transparency, reciprocity and adherence to norms of scientific integrity. So you can really only have cooperation when you’ve met those three criteria. So any collaborations that NSF enters into are judged according to those. And the greatest thing that what happens with cooperation, from my perspective at NSF, is – some of the smartest people around the world don’t live in the United States. There are a lot of smart people in the United States, but most of the smartest people don’t live in the United States (laughs), because most people don’t live in the United States. So if you are trying to advance science, you want to take advantage of the best minds that you can. And that’s the best investment for your taxpayers’ dollars. Want you are doing is trying to advance knowledge. That’s were collaboration really helps. Because you can leverage on each other. The other thing that helps with collaboration is that it’s very hard to be mad at people that are your friends. That is very important because, you know, war sucks. And… It’s a great way to enrich your life by learning from others. There’s this term in the United States that I think it’s ridiculous. It’s called ‘cultural appropriation’. I will argue that the whole idea of human existence is cultural appropriation. It’s learning from others. Learning from others. You are able to live your life more fully because things you learn from other people. I mean, it’s… Kenji Kimura, when he was MEXT’s liaison with NSF, he knew how to write a memo. And I didn’t really know how to write a memo. But he knew how to do it, and he really taught me how. And he was… He is a wonderful guy. We are still friend (laughs). The Japanese system is, you typically rotate every two years, so you’re not an expert in the way – let’s say – I was in my field, but you are broadly trained, and you can better see the connections to make things happen, certainly between agencies. Kenji also really helped me trying to put myself in the minds of MEXT, for example, or in the minds of ECORD: what are they trying to do, what are they looking for, how can we help each other out better… And the other thing is, when you are pulling resources, you can do things that you couldn’t do otherwise. To me, one of the most spectacular aspects of the drilling program was when it was drilling off Nankai with Chikyu,looking at the deep limits of life. You had a number of US young scientists working with really talented people like Yuki Morono, culturing microbes at pressure and temperature in labs, in [?] facilities that nothing like this existed in the geoscience’s labs in the US. And they could have not had that experience if that wasn’t there. Opportunities were provided that otherwise just… wouldn’t have arisen. There are many examples with European collaboration, too. Collaboration with Indian, and Chinese, and Australia, and New Zealand sciences; and there are different perspectives. South Korean scientists as well, you know…  And I even sailed with a Russian scientist in the ODP, and they weren’t involved very long but, you know, it’s interesting, a lot of smart people in Russia too. I think it’s one of the tragedies of the current situation.

BMR: I would like to go back to the transition ODP-IODP. There are two things I would like to ask you. One is, how this complex management structure came to be?

JA: There were a series of planning meetings by a planning group. The acronym was IPSC. The “Incredibly Powerful Subcommittee” was the nickname (laughs). They cashed up a lot of the structure working with NSF. During a lot of this time, I was a rotator in the [NSF] Grants Program, and I was kept away from this because [a part from] my status as a rotator at NSF I was still technically an employee of Texas A&M, and so I was in total conflict with everything going on. So I wasn’t there, I just sort of know about it. Then I left NSF and that was when I was co-chair of this Scientific Measurements Panel. I was part of the planning structure… But that concept was already in place, that there was a Central Management Office. And… You needed some glue to stick things together. I mean, how you have operators in three different countries? How do you get them to do what the science program wants, tells them to do? I wish I could shed more light on that. There is… I think there’s two historical records in terms of…

[interruption]

BMR: We were talking about why this really complex structure came up and you were talking about some historical records that maybe have some…

JA: There was a Science Advisory Structure called the SAS, and there was an Interim Science Advisory Structure called ISAS. There were minutes associated with those. I know that they were scanned. That Keir Becker had a grant to do that. I’m not sure where the repository of that is resides now, but it exists, and you could go to Kier Becker, who is here at the meeting, and Keir is one of the… Keir sailed more than any other scientist (laughs), he is one of the building pillars of everything in scientific ocean drilling. And, you know, Jamie Austin was there as part of the IPSC, known then informally as the Incredibly Powerful Subcommittee (note: a joke!), and Jamie was the acting director of IODP-MI the first year before Manik Talwani was hired. Jamie is probably the best source of information there. I would defer to Jamie.

BMR: And why the money didn’t come as you expected? What was wrong?

JA: Well, I don’t want to speculate for either Japan or Europe, but in the United States there were a few things that happened. The first one was terrorists hijacking planes and putting them in the Twin Towers and the US going to war. So, the budget priorities changed. There was an expectation that the NSF budget was going to double in five years. Of course it didn’t. So it’s a lot harder to… More than double the amount of money you’re putting towards scientific ocean drilling if that doesn’t happen. So… That was the first part. The second part was that in the US there was something called the Ocean Observatory (OOI) Initiative that was being planned. This is where I said I’ll be honest. There was internecine warfare going on, shooting each other within the oceanographic community in the United States. You had people on the Joint Oceanographic Institutions Board of Directors who were actively trying to kill the JR to found the OOI. (laughs). So it was not a positive at all, you know, “the rising seas raised all ships” environment. You had this flat budget and you had these… In the early Obama administration, they decided to go ahead with OOI as part of the stimulus built, but there really wasn’t adequate funds to run both an OOI and the JR, and IODP. The net result was that both programs were starved (laughs), and I think there’s lessons, hard lessons that need to be looked at within NSF. NSF has historically had issues of building things and then not allocating sufficient funds to run them. It’s happened again and again. There’s been all these changes in NSF structurally so this won’t happen, but it keeps happening. And it’s because, in large measure, it’s a different budget used to build things than to operate things. So, you know, that’s an honest answer. And I think that it wasn’t resolved until there was a decadal survey done on behalf of the National Academies for the Ocean Sciences Division, which indicated the importance of both scientific ocean drilling and OOI. That also noted that there needed to be a proper balance between funding of facilities and funding of grants. and it can’t get out of whack. So that’s been a real limitation on how much money has been able to be funded on the JOIDES Resolution. OOI had its funding significantly cut back, as well. I think that the science community is jelled some and I might get people mad at me for saying that, but I watched it and it was a destructive atmosphere for a while.

BMR: Has been challenging for you to communicate this kind of things from NSF to the scientists in ocean drilling?

JA: I think the biggest challenge right now is that people forgot that NSF doesn’t own the facility, that we were supporting a facility to meet the needs of science programs. It wasn’t a permanent facility and they got used to it just being there. And we’ve been on very thin ice to use the term funding wise since the beginning of IODP, I mean, barely surviving. We’ve been saying this within NSF for a long time, but they just expected it to be there. And there is a strong sense of entitlement. And we’ve been saying, you know, you cannot just assume that there’s one – that your career is based on one facility that could go away. I was on a cruise off of Greenland in 1995 with the ship came very close to a storm, and that would have been the end of it. And there are other times where we could have lost the JR. I mean, we were very close to having the conversion project fail. We also, too, had some operational issues that could have caused problems. I mean, at any time the team could have said, “well, this is a very old ship. And, you know, it doesn’t make sense for us to keep operating.” Thankfully, they haven’t. Takes great pride, obviously, in running the ship, but people just expect it. And… there’s still contingent out there. This is like, “how dare you, I need this.” Well, okay. I think it’s painful to realize that you have political support for certain level of funding here and not here. So you have to adapt or change, change the environment. I’m part of a team within NSF that has been working very hard to define new opportunities in scientific drilling, to have continued opportunities to do it. It’s going to be a while, I think, before NSF could support building a new ship. It’s a long process and further refinement is needed in terms of development of the science mission requirements. But there recently have been very strong statements from my division director, Jim McManus, about the vision of ocean sciences pursuing, vigorously moving forward to try to enter in the conceptual design for a new drillship and it will take time. But I retire on December 30^th, so I have to be very careful about saying what might be happening in the future because it’s not on my watch and it’s not my place to do so.

BMR: I won’t ask you about your view on the future (laughs). But I would like to ask you about how scientific ocean drilling has shaped or influenced on your career. What part has it played in defining your career?

JA: Well, it defined my career. I was a land geologist and suddenly I became a marine geologist. And I think the important thing is, [to] any young scientist, they need to be opportunistic. You don’t know where your opportunities are going to come. And I never imagined that I would be a salary man for NSF (laughs). I never imagined. You know, I always thought of myself as being a field geologist, working on volcanoes. I think my career turned out to be better than I could have dreamed and hoped for. So it defined my career. Initially with providing research opportunities, opportunities for personal growth, opportunities for making a lot of friends and that I really charge them, and especially this guy over here (points to Nobu Eguchi) (laughs).  So I’m one of Nobu’s many admirers (all laugh).

BMR: Is there something else you want to add that we haven’t talked about?

JA: Well, to thank everybody involved.

BMR: Thank you very much. It was it was great to be able to talk to you and get also those different perspectives.

JA: Thank you for the opportunity to contribute.