Kevin Johnson

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This transcript is based on a video-recorded interview deposited at MarE3, JAMSTEC (Yokosuka, Japan).

The transcripts of the research project Oral Histories of Scientific Ocean Drilling are polished representations of oral conversations, and are intended solely for the purpose of preserving and documenting personal accounts and memories. They are not a literary product, and are not intended to exhibit literary qualities.

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Interview of Kevin Johnson by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2024 September 4, Shizuoka (Japan). [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is September 4 of 2024, we are at Shizuoka. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, historian of science at JAMSTEC and I am with Kevin Johnson. Thank you. First of all, can you introduce yourself? Say your name, affiliation, and current role.

Kevin Johnson (KJ): I’m Kevin Johnson. I work at the US National Science Foundation (NSF). I’m the Program Director – the lead program director, really the only program director –  for scientific ocean drilling. And that’s based in Washington, DC, but I live in Hawaii. (laughs)

BMR: Are you also doing some kind of scientific research?

KJ: Yeah. I’ve been at NSF since, well, 2018, but with the drilling program, since 2020. Although I was at NSF prior to this for a rotation in 2006 to 2008, working on the drilling program, my career really was doing scientific research, marine geology, mostly having to do with seafloor volcanoes and seafloor exposures of the mantle. So I’m a hard rock geochemist, who used ocean drilling as part of my research over the years, and other methods of collecting samples from the seafloor through almost my entire career. Dredges and kind of, we call them, conventional cruises – as opposed to the drillship, which is a special place. So yeah, I spent my career doing science and then, decided to change and go into handing out money instead of asking for money (laughs), which is what I did for 30 years.

BMR: We will talk later about why that change.

KJ: Why the change, yeah.

BMR: So starting from the beginning, where did you grow up and how was your childhood like? What do you remember about it?

KJ: I grew up in Pennsylvania, so it has no shoreline with the ocean. It’s separated from the East Coast by the state of New Jersey, in-between us and the ocean. But it was close enough so that I would go as a family to the beach and the shore, a lot. My grandfather used to take us fishing, on a fishing boat; we’d go off and spend the days out at sea and just catch fish. So I grew up there, and I was always interested in the ocean. There were TV programs that, when I was a child, were on. One that was very influential was the “Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” (laughs). And when I think back on it, I think that’s what made me think that you could actually do a living of studying the ocean. So I went to undergraduate school and, at that time, no undergraduate degrees were offered for oceanography. They told me, “you have a choice. You can study physics, chemistry, biology or geology, because then in graduate school you can choose oceanography”. And since I loved to hike, and I loved the outdoors, I chose geology just because that seemed like the most fun. And took me from there. I went to grad school, and did the whole thing with oceanography, after that undergraduate experience. So it was great.

BMR: Geology was a fun undergrad choice.

KJ: It was. It was a great, it was a great thing for me, that was a proper choice. Being outdoors, going into the field, was a fantastic thing. And it’s different from going to sea, but still, you’re out in nature, which is what I really wanted to do.

BMR: It has this component, a kind of an adventure. You go out of the office to do something different.

KJ: Yeah, right, right. I like the combination of going to the field to collect samples, doing fieldwork, and then working on the results in the lab. So, it was a good combination of things.

BMR: Did you have any kind of mentor, professor, or someone who was influential in the career path you chose?

KJ: Yeah, I’d say so. When I was an undergrad, there were a couple professors who were focused on ocean sciences, even though they were in the Geology Department. One professor that I remember really well was named professor Robert Schmaltz, and he was at Penn State University. That’s where I went. And he taught a class in Marine Geology. So I took that class, of course. And he would tell, he was very… You know, very interesting dynamic and charismatic man. And he would tell stories as well as, of course, teaching us. So he would tell stories about his graduate school days, and how he worked with famous oceanographers himself. He would talk about Maurice Ewing and Walter Munk as his friends (laughs). Those names stuck with me, and I remember that. He was a very strong influence, and when I wanted to go to graduate school, I asked him for advice on where to go and who to study with. So, he was great. Another one was Al Guber. He ran the marine sciences. So at Penn State there was, like I said, no degree in marine sciences. It was geology. And he was a paleontologist but also studied marine sediments, forams (foraminifera), and things like this. So he ran a marine sciences’ semester where we went to another place, and stayed for three months at a field station doing oceanographic stuff, learning the different techniques and biological and chemical oceanography… And we had to do a project on each one of those special areas. So he was very influential, as well. And, I think, that experience showed me that there is something in this that I could enjoy doing. So, I was lucky. I was lucky to have those two guys, for sure. And then, of course, my graduate professors, obviously they would be influential to me, and they were. But, thinking about who kind of made sure that I stayed on or got on that track and stayed on it, were those two undergraduate professors, really.

BMR: That’s interesting. Now that you mention these names, Ewing and Munk… I guess you are talking about the eighties, right?

KJ: Yes, seventies, eighties. Well, my undergraduate was in the late seventies.

BMR: It was a period of real growth of the ocean sciences, and marine geosciences in particular, in the US. So in the eighties it came with the inertia gained in the post-war, and was very well funded.

KJ: Yeah.

BMR: Maybe you were also part of this wave.

KJ: Maybe, yeah. I was on the receiving end of all that growth that took place with Ewing and Munk. They were all funded by the Navy for the most part, after World War 2. And turned into plate tectonics, essentially. The discovery of that by observing the seafloor. And I was a beneficiary of those guys laying the foundation. That’s for sure. Even though I didn’t work with either one of them, but my professor was a classmate with one of them.

BMR: How was your first offshore experience like?

KJ: When I was in graduate school, in the first year, pretty much the first couple of weeks that I was in graduate school… I can’t remember exactly how it happened. I think that professors at that time would have cruises that they got funded for. The same as today, really. And they needed help. And one professor, he wasn’t my specific professor, but he… I guess he probably announced to somebody that he needed student volunteers to go out to sea. That was Loren Kroenke, that was his name, at the University of Hawaii. That’s where I got my Master’s degree. I went to sea with Loren and a guy that was his post-doc named Kenji Nemoto. He was from Tokai University. And we went out and mapped and sampled the Mid Pacific mountains. That was my first ride to make (laughs), it was literally the first few weeks that I was in graduate school. I had to learn how to make thin sections, I’ve never done that before at sea, on a moving ship. And this is an old, very, very, very unsteady ship; the University of Hawaii’s ship called the Kana Keoki. It was really, really unstable. I don’t get seasick now but in my first expedition, my first cruise, I got a bit seasick (laughs), because that ship was very unstable. And because I was the most junior person, they put me in a bunk with like five other people together in the very bow of the ship. So the ship was – it was called the elevator bunk that I got, because it went up and down, and up and down (laughs). So I finally moved out of it and put down my blankets and beds up in the very middle, at the place where the geophysical instruments were (laughs), the most stable part of the ship. So, that was my first experience.

BMR: Where did you do your PhD? In Hawaii, you said?

KJ: No, that was my Master’s degree. I finished that and went to study volcanoes in Hokkaido University after my Master’s degree. So, two years at the University of Hawaii to get the Masters of Science. And then I wanted to do something else for fun – I mean, for fun but also to stay officially in science. So I got a Monbusho research grant from the Ministry of Education, here in Japan, and went to Hokkaido University to study active volcanoes with a professor there, at Hokkaido University, named Yoshio Katsui. I spent two years there studying volcanoes. And then, at the end of the two years, I said, “Time to go back and get my PhD”. So I applied to the MIT and Woods Hole Program, a joint program in oceanography, and that’s where I went for my PhD.

BMR: Why Japan? What did attract you about it?

KJ: I was always interested in Japan. I loved – I had never been to Japan, but going to the University of Hawaii, I was exposed to a lot of Japanese influence. There’s a lot of nisei and sansei people, which meant multiple generations of Japanese that were there. So there was quite a bit of Japanese cultural influence in Hawaii. That was part of it. And a lot of first generation Japanese, too. Tourists, and professors at the University, Kenji Nemoto… So I was really intrigued by Japan. And also, at that time, (laughs) I had a Japanese girlfriend. So, we finished our Master’s degrees and decided, maybe I’ll go to Japan to see what that life is about and sort of being in her environment. It turns out that we broke up once I got to Japan (laughs), but I fell in love with Japan from that two year experience. And it stuck with me ever since, because I did my post-doc in Japan, too. After my PhD work, I came back and did two years at the University of Tokyo. So I loved everything about Japan, really.

BMR: It happened to me as well. Everything is so different.

KJ: Yeah, right. It’s so different from the US, that’s for sure. It seems, at least from the outside, looking at Japan and experiencing it as a foreigner, as an American, everything is so well organized, and orderly, and predictable, and reliable (laughs)… And at the same time, the cultural traditions are just beautiful, and the food is fantastic, and there’s – even within the huge city of Tokyo, there’s sections that are unique and maintain their own identity, right? The different neighborhoods… So yeah, it was a very huge difference from the US that I really liked it very much.

BMR: I guess you were very young when you stayed in Japan. Did you have any cultural shock?

KJ: Yeah… Well, for sure I didn’t know what to expect with just the day to day life of how people behaved, and just how… Tightly – I don’t know how to say this nicely – how tightly everyone conformed to a certain way of doing things that they didn’t step outside of the lines. That surprised me a lot. I mean, I knew from what I had heard that this is the way life is, but until you experience that, you don’t know just how much that really drives everybody’s day to day life. It really guides them completely. And there was a few food surprises. When I was in Hokkaido University I was a research student, so I lived in the dorms with other Japanese students. There was a dining hall, and I went there for my first breakfast, and I didn’t know anything about really… I mean, I knew the sort of what the Western world tells you about the Japanese food, of course. But breakfast especially were pretty, pretty different from what I… So I saw things laid out, there was rice and there was soup of various kinds… And then, there was a thing with eggs, and some other thing that I didn’t know what it was. I took an egg, and I thought it was a hardboiled egg, right? (laughs) I cracked it at the table when I got there. And it was raw! So I said, what do you do with this? I had no idea what to do with it (laughs). So I looked around, to see what other people of the Japanese people were doing. And I finally saw somebody with an egg, over in the distance. So I was watching what they did with that egg. They cracked it, and they mixed it together.And that particular person took this other thing out of a Styrofoam, little Styrofoam thing. It was natto. I had never heard of natto before, or seen it. I saw it from a distance, I didn’t know what it was. And I saw this kind of slimy stuff that it was mixing together with the egg and shoyu (soy sauce). I mean, I eventually tried the natto. Of course, at first it’s disgusting, right? (laughs) but I was receptive to it. I mean, I thought, “okay, if this is the way the Japanese do it, then it’s got to be fine”. I got past the initial kind of disgusting smell and (laughs) taste isn’t bad, but the smell… I’ve grown to actually love it. So, back in my home in Hawaii, I have some in the refrigerator right now, because I buy it frequently.

BMR: Wow (both laugh)

KJ:I mean, I have natto on a regular basis at home (both laugh). So, those things, the cultural thing and the food thing. There’s a lot of food things… Some of the things you eat at an izakaya, that they serve, are pretty weird. We went there once with some friends, to one izakaya – the sort of drinking establishments where people just go to hang out and socialize. And we ordered some chicken, but we didn’t know that it was raw chicken. It was tori sushi, so sashimi chicken. We didn’t know that it was raw! (laughs) When we ordered it, we recognized the character for chicken, but we didn’t know that it was sashimi (laughs) because we thought no one would eat raw chicken. Well, we do (both laugh). We tried it, they served it to us and said, “well, if they’re eating it, then it’s okay”. We thought about, “oh, salmonella, we are going to get sick”. But a few other people were eating it, so we said, “we’re going to be okay, we’ll try”. That was fine. I don’t eat it today, it’s not like natto (laughs).

BMR: Yes, it’s not something you want to do in the US, right? With a chicken breast…

KJ: No… I don’t trust the hygiene in the US (both laugh).

BMR: So let’s go back to… You were in Hokkaido, and it was a time between your Masters and your PhD.

KJ: Right, it was two years in between. It was called as a research student, that’s how it was classified. I got the option that if I wanted to stay to get my degree at Hokkaido University… I mean, a lot of foreign students from other countries, especially, viewed that as a great opportunity to get a high-level education. So I knew people from India, from Colombia, South America… Who were in there for dentistry school and things like that. But I think that they viewed that as their best opportunity to get a really high-level education, sort of paid for by these fellowships. But in my case, I didn’t go into it with the intention of getting a degree there. I just really wanted to experience it and do some research. I got a couple of papers that I wrote, and it was a great experience. It was a fantastic learning experience for me, scientifically and culturally, as well. So that was a two year block and then I moved.

But before I went to undergraduate school, I was in the Peace Corps. I lived in Western Samoa for two years – actually, almost three years, between my undergraduate and my master’s degree. I was a hydrologist in Samoa.

BMR: How is Samoa like?

KJ: It’s like Hawaii, actually, but smaller islands. But it’s Polynesian, and it was beautiful and fantastic experience. I loved the people, the environment… Yeah, it was really – you know, following my just pretty simple growing up in Pennsylvania thing (laughs), to go to Samoa as a young guy, I was like 22, it was a dream. It was a dream. It was Heaven, right? The people are so friendly, and everybody there doesn’t really have the same hang ups as especially East Coast United States people do. They’re so free, and friendly, and beautiful environment… A tropical paradise, really. And that’s kind of what made me want to stay living in Hawaii after that. That’s why I applied to the University of Hawaii. It was because of that. I was able to get my Master’s, but then… At that age, two-year periods of time was about what I wanted to do. I didn’t really feel like going straight into a long graduate school thing. I liked the variety. So, I would sort of change every couple of years until I finally went into the PhD program, and then… adult. I became an adult, right? (both laugh). I had to stabilize myself. I didn’t think about stabilizing until… I mean, the PhD took me four and a half years, and it was the longest I had been somewhere. I finished my PhD when I was 34, rather than 30 or 29, or whatever most people finishes. And then I met my wife in graduate school, and we did our postdocs here. So it was again another two year period in Japan.

BMR: So you came together to Japan?

KJ: Yeah, we both got postdocs here. NSF postdocs. We were at the University of Tokyo, and we enjoyed the two years. Then, after that postdoc, you kind of have to think, “okay, what am I going to do?”. And that’s when… She wanted to go back home, she’s from Hawaii. And I knew that I loved Hawaii, too. So, we both looked for jobs and got jobs in Hawaii after our postdocs. And that’s where we’ve been ever since. I still spend blocks of time, a couple of year a year here, a couple of years there (laughs), in other places. But yeah, Hawaii is the root now, I’m rooted there.

BMR: How did you first get to know scientific ocean drilling? What was your first contact with it?

KJ: Probably I was aware of it, certainly as a grad student. Not so much, maybe I probably had heard of it as an undergrad. The DSDP or something like this. I’m sure I had, because my professor probably talked about it in that class. But then, when I got into the master’s program at the University of Hawaii, some of the professors and even maybe some of the grad students, might have been involved in ODP expeditions. In fact, I know they were. The professors for sure, had gone or were going out. So I knew about it, then. I didn’t have any plan to go out on a drilling program at that time, on an expedition. But when I went into the PhD program at MIT, one of my professors from the Woods Hole (Oceanographic Institution) side of things was involved in trying to get some expeditions going for the Southwest Indian Ridge. And that’s where I was doing my PhD research, on rocks from the southwest Indian Ridge. So I became kind of immersed in the Ocean Drilling Program, ODP at that time. I didn’t go out on any expeditions as a grad student, but I was in contact with people all the time. And when I finished, I came to Japan for my postdoc, and there was an expedition that was advertised for doing some work on a hard rock Leg. I applied and I was accepted to do it as a postdoc. And because I was in Japan, I was accepted as a Japanese (laughs). I was a Japanese representative on that expedition [ODP Leg 140). That was the first one, in 1991. So I kind of got immersed in it from that point on, and became involved in it, gradually, increasing amounts of things… I went on another expedition in 2005. And then, I was at NSF doing the program manager for the Ocean Drilling Program at the Ocean Sciences Division, and then worked in Tokyo for IODP MI (IODP Management International) in 2011 and 2012. Then, that program came to an end, and the current one that’s going on now – and it’s going to end soon – started. So I was there at the very end of the first IODP, and then I went out again on another expedition in 2017, 2016 to 2017. And then, went to NSF again. So I’ve been involved in it for 33 years in sort of direct way, and then indirectly a bit before that.

BMR: So, after your first expedition, you continued your career in Hawaii. What kind of things did you studied? Did you continue with international collaborations?

KJ: Yeah, I was a research professor at the University of Hawaii and I spent some years also before that, in Hawaii, as a research geologist at the Bishop Museum. It’s the State Museum of Natural and Cultural History. I was the only geologist on the staff. I wrote research grants and I was the chief scientist on some cruises during that time, and collaborated with international collaborators all throughout. And then, when I moved from the Museum to the University of Hawaii, I continued my research, teaching, and collaboration with international folks, and continued the drilling program involvement as well.

BMR: In what kind of topics and regions where you interested?

KJ: I continued working in the Indian Ocean. I was doing mostly studies on the volcanic structures, the formation of volcanic islands, and the tectonic evolution of the Indian Ocean basin. So we did a lot of seafloor mapping, structural studies of gravity magnetics, as well as dredging, which is what I kind of focused my work the igneous rocks. And I did geochemical studies of those, to look at a chemical variation along the ridge, to look at both the involvement and influence of hot spots on the ridge, and just the Mantle compositional variation along a long segment of the Indian Ocean ridges. And also the Mantle. I was interested in the Mantle, and how the Mantle melts to form the basalts. So I studied the mantle rocks, dredging of those rocks and, in some cases, drilled cores that hit mantle rocks. And looking at the geochemistry of those, to look at how they tell you about how the melting process works, that forms the basalts that erupt on the seafloor. So, it was a whole sort of interconnected set of questions that I’ve looked at, or studied, over the years.

BMR: And how did you go from there to NSF, in 2006?

KJ: I was at that time a professor at the University of Hawaii. And NSF has this — I guess you call it a program, but it’s a method where program directors come from universities and spend two years, usually, as a program director at NSF. They call them rotators. It’s a category of employment at NSF that brings active scientists to NSF. It kind of helps the NSF… Keeps everything fresh at NSF. The program directors who review proposals – that’s our job, when we’re there – were current scientists, right? So we kind of know what the research that’s current at that period of time, what are the important questions, and we sort of run the programs with a fresh set of eyes. There are some permanent career program directors there, too, and they do a good job of keeping up because they review proposals all the time. So they read what’s current. But this program of rotators is still active today. We have a lot of rotators that come in, and especially anywhere from a year to three years, usually, at NSF. And that’s what I was on in 2006 to 2008. Then, I went back to the University of Hawaii, and spent until 2018. And in 2018, I decided that I was getting… I don’t know, antsy or something, right? (laughs) I wanted to do something different again. And, again, I went to NSF as a rotator. I thought it was going to be for two years, but then, at the end of the two years – I was in the Earth Sciences Division at that time – at the end of that rotation of two years, some of the folks from Ocean Sciences came in, and asked me – because, you know, I’m an ocean scientist but I was working at Earth Sciences at that time. They asked me if I was available, or interested, in coming over to Ocean Sciences because they needed somebody with my expertise. And I said, “Yeah”. And they offered it basically as a permanent position. So that’s how that happened. And then from 2020 through now, I’ve been there as a not rotator (laughs). So that’s how it happened, and I was fine with that. I maintain my residency in Hawaii and I had an apartment in (Washington) D.C. at NSF. So, from 2018 to 2020, had my apartment and I would go back and forth from Hawaii to (Washington DC), and it was a long, long commute (laughs). I don’t do it now. I would go for  two weeks at a time to DC, and then go back home. Then COVID came. And NSF told all of us not to come to work anymore. I mean, to work, but not to go to the office. So everybody was remote anyway, and that was perfect. So, during that period of time, I gave my apartment up because it wasn’t clear when we were going to go back. And then, when everybody started coming back, I pretty much decided I was going to stay in Hawaii and go back to DC less frequently. So I don’t go back very much.

BMR: If I understood it well, the first time you were in NSF you were not for scientific ocean drilling, but in general for Earth Sciences projects.

KJ: In 2018 to 2020, yeah. In 2006 to 2008 I was for ocean drilling.

BMR: What kind of things you had to learn or you learned at that position? I’m asking because you were coming from sciences, so nothing to do with management.

KJ: Nothing to do with management, no. I mean, there’s different program directors and my job right now doesn’t involve reviewing proposals, but for most program directors, that’s the primary job – to run programs that are for basic core research. So, people like I used to be, a research scientist, submit the proposal to NSF. It’s reviewed by NSF program directors and a panel of colleagues, basically fellow ocean scientists or earth scientists. So my job in 2006 to 2008 was to review proposals, to run panels, and to get reviewers to review the proposals. So, yeah, it’s not a big transition, really. I mean, you have to learn a few technical things like how to use the internal NSF software and things like that, and what reports you have to write to justify your decisions on, or your recommendations for proposals. But that’s pretty logical, right? It’s not that big of a difference.

My job now is a bit different than that, though, because it really involves a lot of serious, higher-level management of a big program like IODP was, and how the new program is going to be. It’s more making sure that all the different parts fit together. And that is a different skillset, you’re right. And it’s a learning curve. It’s a lot of things that I had to learn fairly quickly along the way, and understand the relationships between the international partners and how the funding of this whole thing worked, and how that has to get administered within NSF. So there was a lot of learning that went on fairly fast, for that. And you’re right, I mean, I didn’t really plan on getting involved in that. When I first went in Earth Sciences in 2018, I was involved more in the reviewing proposals that come in, kind of thing. And then, when Ocean Sciences needed me, there was a period of time that I worked on the marine geology and geophysics proposals that came in – so, normal stuff. Then they said, “Oh, well, we’d need you to do the ocean drilling program” because Jamie (Allan), the previous guy, was retiring and I worked with him, kind of overlapped for a year, and then I took over when he retired. So I learned a lot in that year, and I was very glad that he sort of dragged out his retirement (laughs). He stretched it out over a year, which allowed us to overlap.

So it’s been good, because it’s been a very new experience and, you know, at a senior scientist level, for me, stuff was getting a little routine in the regular science. Proposal writing, grant writing, and being able to learn something new from a totally different perspective like this job, it’s a kind of a real privilege, because most people just say, “ah, it’s time to retire, so I’m just going to finish my last proposal and go away” (laughs). But I have this, so… It’s a different challenge (laughs). It’s not very simple, right? Especially right now (both laugh).

BMR: It’s like a challenge activates you.

KJ: Yeah, it activates you, it forces you to stay sharp and… I’m not saying that I’m still sharp but, I mean, I have to stay aware of what’s going on and interact with my colleagues on a different level. So it’s been enjoyable from that perspective. Very challenging. Well, because the program is ending, right? And everybody is upset. And no one knows where to place the blame because, you know, there is no real place to place the blame. It was just the confluence of factors that the program was going to end, the ship was getting old, so it was going to have to come to an end soon anyway. But it was running so beautifully, and no one understands. “Wow, why cut it off now?” Well, it’s not really cutting it off. It’s just because, number one, there weren’t enough dollars to keep this thing going from all combined sources, like I talked about today. And the ship was coming to a practical end in 2028. So, we’re trying to figure out ways to keep it going. But it’s not going to be, even if we keep it going for another three years, it’s going to end then, right? So people really kind of have to get used to the idea. I think today was good, because we started talking about, okay, this is reality. And now we’ve got to figure out how to work together again. And that’s the hard part (laughs).

BMR: How the support of NSF to scientific ocean drilling has changed through these two periods that you have been involved in NSF? If it has changed.

KJ: I think when I was there back in 2006 to 2008, I was less aware of how things work at NSF. I wasn’t really looking at that. I knew I was there for a short time, and I knew what I had to do while I was there, so I just focused on what my job then was. Things might have been different then, in terms of how they were administered, but I think they weren’t that different, really. People who have been there a long time have said that things have changed over the years and, you know, we get new directors every six years. And each one of them brings their own style. I suppose the people who have been there a long time can observe those differences whereas for me, I wasn’t there continuously for any length of time. So I don’t know. All I know is the way I approached that was different then, because I knew that it was just a short time, and I was just going to go back. And this time, I’ve paid more attention to the way things work, and how decisions are made , at more upper echelons of NSF. And, like I said, I can’t tell if that’s different, but I think it probably is, based on who the directors are at any given time, and who the Division Director is at any given time, too. I mean, all those things factor into it. So, things haven’t changed for me much other than my level of understanding of the system has changed. I see a lot more of how things work behind the curtain – I guess you could say – than I did before. And it’s interesting. You just realize that all the people that are running the show, they’re just humans as well, right? (both laugh) They’re not at some superhuman level of ability to do things. They’re just humans, actually. So I try to understand where the decisions come from, from that perspective rather than criticizing things, because I don’t necessarily agree with them. I try to see now, okay, well, there’s a whole lot of things that went into that decision by the guy at the top. It’s not just how it affects me. It’s who’s coming down from above him, and who he has to answer to. And all the considerations of everybody in NSF, and so on down the line. So I’d say that’s my difference between 2006 and now. Much more understanding of how things work.

BMR: Bigger awareness of the different relations that have to be balanced, before taking a decision in the direction to go.

Yeah.

BMR: Now that you’re mentioning this, I’m also thinking on your experience in IODP MI (Management International). That was towards the end of the first program, when the Integrated structure was at its end. So please, tell me about that, your experience. And first of all, how did you end up in Tokyo again? (laughs)

KJ: Well, it’s an interesting question, how did I ended up doing that. Again, I think it was at a period of my regular career where I was getting a little bit tired of doing the same thing. I had just switched from working at the Museum to moving over to the University of Hawaii, maybe four years before that. So there was a four year period, and I was doing research. And… Maybe I don’t have a long attention span (laughs), I don’t know, but I needed a change. That was in 2011… Interesting. So that was right when the Tohoku earthquake happened, that this thing came around to me. I had been talking to Hans Christian Larsen, who was… At the end of ODP, when I started to go to the first IODP, was like around 2005. Because I was on Leg 305, which was one of the last ODP legs, and that was in 2005… So things were changing then. I took the job at NSF in 2006 as a rotator, and that’s when the ship, the JR (JOIDES Resolution), went into the yard for refitting and everything. So, there was no drilling activity going on but there was still, in the case of what I had to do, a lot of scientists who wanted to work on cores, like the legacy stuff, and do site surveys for when the thing came back online. So that was what I was doing in 2005 or 2006, to 2008. During that time, I guess I got familiar with the way that IODP was being set up. And there was a branch in Hokkaido, at Hokkaido University as it turns out, just by chance, and I got to know the folks who are running that. Hans Christian Larsen was the head of that office, and Nobu (Eguchi) was one of the – I forget what they call them, project coordinators or something like that. Him and another guy named Jeff Schuffer. So I got to know them through meetings that we had during that period of time. I got involved with that and I got to know them, and then I went back to my job at Hawaii. And somehow, the communications were maintained. I kept talking to people at meetings. And it became clear that there was a position coming open in Japan, at Tokyo, when the office had moved there. Hans Christian Larsen and I were chatting at an AGU one year and he said something about, you know, encouraging me to apply for the job – which I didn’t even know was being advertised, to be honest (laughs). So I did, and I got that job. It was something that interested me because it was in Japan and I wanted to go back to Japan. I took a period of time off from university before, I just took a leave. Basically like sabbatical, but a little longer than a sabbatical. That’s how that happened. It was just because, again, I was interested in the change, and it was in a place that I really enjoyed.

I knew it was kind of at the end of the program, so I didn’t exactly know what to expect other than trying to set things up for the next program to kick in. We wrote a lot, we spent a lot of time – Michiko was working with me at that time, and we spent a lot of time… Of course, Michiko Yamamoto was doing similar stuff as she’s doing now. Hans Christian and I spent a lot of time writing the terms of reference for a lot of the positions that were going to be put into place for the next IODP. So it was a lot of that kind of stuff, that we did. That was really kind of interesting and important, and that’s when the new structure took place. The SEP (Science Evaluation Panel) thing came into play, and the IODP Forum came in. That’s how it happened, and that was my role. It was interesting, and it’s hard to believe it was so long ago because now this program is ending. The one that we kind of laid the groundwork for, then.

BMR: What were the challenges you found, towards the end of the first IODP? And let me connect it with another question. You were involved in the transition from IODP one to IODP two. And now that we are towards its end, you are also involved on it.

KJ: Right.

BMR: So now, looking back in time, what kind of things didn’t work as expected, or you think that could have been done different?

KJ: I really think that the program, as it was re-envisioned from IODP-1 to IODP-2, was a huge improvement. I think that the previous system – and I wasn’t really so heavily involved in the goings, operations, of IODP-1 except at the very end, when we were trying to set up IODP-2, as it turned out. But I think the improvement in the way that the panels are set up now, took place at that envisioning period, and that has worked out very, very well. And IODP³ is basically taking that model and using it. It’s the same one, the SEP (Science Evaluation Panel), pretty much exactly the same as IODP-2. Not much difference, really. So it shows that it’s been successful, it has been really successful, it worked well.

But I think that the… the ultimate problem with the whole… The funding, I’ll just say it’s straightforward. The funding model was flawed in IODP-2. There never really was sufficient support from any of the partners; not just the international partners but even NSF. I mean, the amount of money that was available at the beginning stayed flat from the US, and stayed flat from the partners, except that it went down (laughs), actually, when partners dropped out. But the ones that stayed in – which basically at the end was ANZIC (Australia and New Zealand IODP Consortium) and ECORD (European Consortium of Ocean Research Drilling), they stayed the same. NSF stayed the same, but costs went up. So the funding model is what was not – I can’t say anything about it because I wasn’t involved in re-imagining the funding model. That was done outside of what I had to do in IODP MI. That was done within the funding agencies kind of working it out. And I think that that, looking back on it from the perspective I have now, that… It was too loosely organized, and didn’t have enough firm checks in place, enforcements in place, and any recognition of costs going up really over time, which obviously they would have known that they were going to go up. But, you know, they were lucky to have those CPPs (Complementary Project Proposals) that were there to provide a big influx of cash that was then dribbled out over time.

So I think that – and that’s kind of why, listening to the conversations we had today – we’re at the very end talking about how to make things work, together, collaboratively again. And in my mind, immediately it went to, well, we’ve got a system that works beautifully right now. So that system actually is the system that would work. But because of the financial thing, we’ve basically torn the thing apart, and we’re forced now to develop our own individual programs and try to fit them back together again in a sort of way that mimics the efficiency that we have had with the SEP, the EPSP (Environmental Protection and Safety Panel), and those panels. The guiding overview of everything by a structure that’s central, which is what we would like to achieve with the new, disparate programs. And it would have been possible if all the partners had been able to support what the costs of running the operation were to begin with. But because that wasn’t possible, we had to break off – which is going to end up, I think, making things less efficient, obviously, and ultimately it cost more.

So, it’s ironic, that things were working well, the partners somehow didn’t convince – nobody convinced their respective funding agencies. The Europeans, the Americans, all scientists were saying, “this is critical program, we need it”. But the scientists didn’t get the point across to the people that actually control the money. And that’s not even just NSF in our case, in the US case. It’s Congress. They needed to be convinced, or shown that it’s important… years ago. At least a year ago, if not more. And I think the scientists were saying to each other that it was important, but the message never got transmitted across the big divide between scientists and Congress, in the case of the US, and the various funders in other countries. So, it made it look like it wasn’t a valued program. I think that that, to me, is a lesson that is very, very hard to – it’s hard for me to stomach. Because now, as I said before, I can see a lot of how these parts work together from a much higher level in NSF, in the relations with the partner countries. I see it now much more clearly than I did when I was involved in NSF in 2006 and from IODP MI in 2011. I see it now so much more clearly… Scientists have to do a better job of getting that point across at critical times. And at NSF, we can’t do it; we’re not allowed to lobby Congress. We can’t talk to them unless they come and ask us questions. And they weren’t asking questions until this year.

BMR: Now that the Ocean Discovery Program (IODP) is about to finish and the JR has just retired, being a scientist with a background in scientific ocean drilling, I guess that you have been the one providing answers to a very upset community of people.

KJ: Yeah.

BMR: How has been the relation with the community like? I think it’s a tough position.  

KJ: Yeah… It’s often tough. It was tougher in the beginning. My approach was always that I had to try to be as straightforward as I could and not make up any excuses, or make any promises that couldn’t be kept. And not take anything personally – criticisms. At the beginning, especially, there were a lot of criticisms mostly leveled at NSF as an organization, not directly at me for making that decision. But I was the point of the spear, and so I had to listen to that and then try to be as flat, you know, not emotional about my response. Sometimes I came very close, because there were some ill-intentioned and misinformed accusations coming from the community. So, I just took it from the point of view of, okay, in every talk that I give, I have to be consistent with what I say. Not take anything personally. Give the facts as much as I can give the facts, without – you know, there’s things within the NSF that they have stages of being coming public. And when they’re at the first initial stages, internal discussions and decisions being made, we can’t spit that out at the public, because it hasn’t really been fully decided even within the organization. And the community, I think, at the beginning wanted answers about these things. And we couldn’t really give them the answers that they were looking for specifically.

Over time, I’ve been able to sort of adjust my talks so that I include more information that as the decisions have been made in NSF, I’ve been able to actually bring them out to the public. The accusations have kind of lessened, but people still blame NSF for making this decision. You see the words, “Oh, why did NSF pulI  the plug?” And that part really bothers me, because no matter how many times I say it in fairly straightforward terms, that it wasn’t NSF decision alone to not support the JR. Our funding level has been the same. It hasn’t gone up, but it has been the same. And NSF is the majority funder of the program. So, it’s everybody, it’s the entire community, it’s all the partners that also you’ve got to look at that, and say, How did this fail? – not fail so much as, how did it get to the point where the realization occurred so late in the game, that decisions couldn’t be changed, no adjustments be made to the contributions. And plus, I think that there were some stumbles along the way, in the way NSF communicated with its partners.

These (IODP) Forum meetings, actually, and what a couple of years ago, when the first sort of realization when the partners were presented with the options of paying per berth in order to actually maintain the funding level for the for the ship. And the way it was presented by NSF was… It was factually accurate, but the language was not sensitive to the partners, and the commitment that the partners felt that they had, certainly to the science that was being done, not necessarily the funding level that was provided. But it was presented in a very… American way, let’s say (laughs).

BMR: What has been the most valuable learning you take, after having been involved in scientific ocean drilling throughout your career?

KJ: Without doubt, I think, the most important thing is – well, there’s a lot of things that sort of fit together. But, number one, making sure that your international partnership agreements are very clear, and there’s no room for flex [misunderstanding] in those. In this case MOUs, Memorandum of Understanding. And that’s not just from my side going out, I think, obviously everybody has to be on the same page, and in agreement, and it has to be a genuinely well-thought out process to begin with. But the international partnerships are crucially important to it. So, those have to be… Nurtured. That’s the thing that, to me, in my experience in ocean drilling over these years, has demonstrated that those international partnerships are the most important thing, really. Without it, you have nothing. I mean, you really don’t.

And I’m a little worried about our national program, and that’s why I continue to really advocate for making sure that we can coordinate and cooperate with IODP³. It’s really important. It has to be that way. It has to be international and to that end, those international agreements have to be very, very clearly agreed on with a lot of detail. And I think that the MOUs here, in the current program, they were pretty detailed, actually; but they were not enforced [note: or even enforceable]. There was a lot of latitude given to the way that they were interpreted. And sort of special treatment given that certain instances that ended up becoming more expected over time. Well, it sort of drifted. Can’t be allowed to drift. So there has to be some sort of mutual… I don’t know what it would be, another level, maybe another advisory level that it’s above everything, that just keeps a check on how expeditions have been going, how the budget looks, and an oversight advisory board. I don’t know what you would call it, but something like that. And we really don’t have that. It’s kind of left up to the individual partners to let things go or not (laughs). And it’s gotten out of hand, I think.

BMR: Well, thank you very much.

KJ: You’re welcome. It was a pleasure.

Celebrating Christmas aboard the JOIDES Resolution during IODP Expedition 366, to the Mariana Convergent Margin and South Chamorro Seamount. Right, discussion over just-retreived cores. Photos by Tim Fulton, IODP/JRSO.