Rodey Batiza (2 parts)

Part 1

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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.

The primary goal of this transcript is to capture the spoken words and memories of the interviewee as accurately as possible. Minor editing and polishing works have been performed to enhance clarity and readability while maintaining the authenticity of spoken discourse, including non-standard grammar, inconsistencies, repetitions, and pauses. The interviewee has been allowed to review and edit the transcript, and they have approved the publication of this version before posting it.

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Interview of Rodey Batiza by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2024 December 10, Westin Hotel, Washington, D.C. (USA) [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is December 10 of 2024. I’m Beatriz Martinez-Rius, historian of science at JAMSTEC, and I’m with Rodey Batiza at the Westin Hotel in Washington DC. Thank you very much. Can you first tell me your name, and what has been your position in the scientific ocean drilling program?

Rodey Batiza (RB): My name is Rodey Batiza, and my role in scientific ocean drilling began when I was a graduate student, and went entirely throughout my career. The drilling program and my career have been going hand in hand, from the beginning. So, I have been involved with some part. When I was a graduate student, it was called the Deep Sea Drilling Program, DSDP, which was the first drilling program, with a different ship. And then, has evolved all the way until my retirement, which was in 2014. So, ten years ago. So, some things may be a little rusty (laughs).

BMR: It’s been so many years, that you probably have a lot of memories and a lot of things there.

RB: Oh, yeah.

BMR: How has been your relationship to scientific ocean drilling, after your retirement?

RB: Well, not really very much because since I retired from NSF, there’s not really any opportunity to serve on committees or on the advisory structure, or anything like that. So mostly, I’ve just been observing and watching what was happening.

BMR: And what have you seen?

RB: Very sadly, the end of IODP and the end of the JOIDES Resolution, which has been extremely sad. I think very poorly advised. I think that the NSF has made an error. The US government has made an error. And I’m sure there’s plenty of blame to go around. But given the importance of climate change to society, and given the fact that the scientific ocean drilling program has been one of the unique ways of getting records of past climate in different parts of the ocean, and giving us a way to predict future climate change, I think it’s especially sad that we no longer have a way to do that.

BMR: I know that we will go back to these kind of things during our conversation, but what you just said made me think of, have you found during your career some equivalent situation? Maybe not reaching the point where we are now, but maybe a point where there was a risk of finishing scientific ocean drilling.

RB: Yeah, we did. It was in the transition from the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program to the International Scientific Discovery Program, because as the JR was undergoing a large renovation in Singapore, and this renovation was very far behind schedule, and it was costing a lot more money. And so, there was a time when it looked like the NSF might just say, “stop it”, and we’re finished. But luckily, that didn’t happen. The renovation was a big success. The drillship, the renovated drillship, was very, very successful. You know, it was hugely capable; much more capable even than the J.R., because drilling engineers were involved in the renovation. And so, after the renovation was completed and it went back into service, it was very, very successful in all the legs that happened afterwards. Up until now.

BMR: We will come back to this, but let’s start from the beginning. Let me start by asking you, where are you from?

RB: I was born in Mexico, and lived in Mexico until I was 11. My father was, a vice president of a bank, and my mother was a housewife. When I was 11, my father decided that he wanted to become a law school professor. So, we moved to New Orleans, where Tulane University is. He became a law professor at Tulane University. And I started speaking English, instead of Spanish.

BMR: And since then, you’ve been speaking English.

RB: Since then, I’ve been speaking English – except when I go to Mexico or to Spain, or… For my thesis, I mapped several oceanic islands that belonged to Mexico. And so, I spoke with fishermen and people like that.

BMR: How was the change for you? How did moving from Mexico to the US influenced or affected you?

RB: I’m sure it, did in lots of different ways. Everything was different in Mexico than in the US. School was different. In Mexico, I went to school from 8:00 in the morning to 5:00 in the afternoon, and we had sports throughout the day. In the US, school day was much smaller, but no sports. So yeah, it was it was pretty different. You know, not better or worse, just different.

BMR: Did you adapt well to the US?

RB: I think so. Well, except for the fact that I couldn’t play soccer. I could play baseball, but I couldn’t play soccer and that was very traumatic, because I love soccer. Like, all little kids love soccer.

BMR: In Spain is the main sport. Everybody loves soccer.

RB: Oh, sure.

BMR: Baseball doesn’t really exist.

RB: I know, I know. Soccer is everything, all through South America, and Europe… And it’s all soccer almost in all the rest of the world, except for the U.S. (laughs). Well, soccer is also very popular now in the US, also. My grandchildren play soccer.

BMR: So, why did you decided to go into Earth Sciences? What sparked your interest on that?

RB: When I was a little kid, I had a rock collection and a mineral collection, and I loved that. I started that in Mexico. And then, when I moved here, I continued collecting rocks. But when I was an undergraduate student, I flunked out of college.

BMR: What does that mean? Did you abandon college?

RB: I got poor grades, and they told me to leave (laughs). They call it flunking out. So, I flunked out – this was 1967. So, I realized that if I wasn’t in college, I would soon be drafted to go to Vietnam. So, instead, I joined the Navy. I joined submarines, and I was in submarines for several years. And then, when I was going to get out, I was wondering, “What would I do now? Would I go back to college or do something else?” And I decided I would go back to college, but I would major in something that I picked out of a hat, because I had so many interests – a little bit like you – I had so many interests that I was always switching around to do this and that. Philosophy, and romantic poetry, and English… Engineering, Physics… So, I picked Geology, and I decided that whatever I picked, I would at least get a bachelor’s degree. So, that’s what I did.

But then, when I was finished with geology, I realized that you could do geology in the ocean and go to sea, which I loved going to sea. I love being in the ocean. And I realized I could put the two things together and study the geology of the ocean floor. So, then I applied to graduate school and got into all the graduate schools; went to Scripps and became a marine geologist.

BMR: How was like the experience of being in the submarines? I think I’ve never met someone who was for seven years in the submarines, in this period of history.

RB: (laughs) Well, I won this watch. We had something called Submarine School…

BMR: [Reading the inscription] “Rodey Batiza, SSR US Sub School”. I cannot read the class. September 1967. And it’s still working!

RB: Yeah, it still works. I was number 1 in my class. There were like 300 students, and I was number one in my class. So, from getting all F’s in college, I got all A’s in submarine school.

BMR: In studying things related to the submarines, like, I guess…?

RB: Yeah, all the systems and… Yeah, very interesting. And then you go on to the submarine and you have to qualify on that submarine. That usually takes six months. I did it in six weeks.

BMR: Oh, wow. Because you were studying hard?

RB: I was studying very hard, because I loved it. So, I was working 16 hours a day and then doing my work besides that. But I loved it. So, then I earned my little dolphin thing, and then, I became a radioman. I did communications. That was very interesting.

BMR: Were you involved in any conflict?

RB: No, no, it was the Cold War. So, we were involved with things with Russian submarines, sometimes. Doing little games (laughs), but not to actual conflict. So, I was lucky not to go to Vietnam. Many of my friends went to Vietnam and many were killed.

BMR: Vietnam was a sort of a generational trauma…

RB: It was terrible, and it was very unpopular in the U.S. Often if I would go to the U.S in my Navy uniform, people would spit on me. Because, “Military, bad…” (laughs).

BMR: Well, let’s move on because otherwise we can spend here a lot of time.

RB: Sure, we should move on. You know, a lot of people in the drilling program were involved in the Navy. There was another guy called, I don’t know if you know his name, Ralph Moberly. He was the chair of PCOM for about six years and had a lot of different roles, co-Chief scientist… And he hired me (laughs), in his department in Hawaii. So, this is again where my involvement with IODP – because I had been on leg 61 with him and with another, another co-chief scientist called, Sy Schlager [Seymour O. Schlanger]. Sy Schlanger was at Northwestern University. So, I got a job at Northwestern University.

BMR: Before moving there, there’s something I’d like to ask you. You did your PhD at Scripps. How was the environment at Scripps like? I know that in this late-60s and early-70s the Scripps was managing the DSDP, and it was a period when marine geosciences were thriving through plate tectonics and money channeled from ONR and all these government agencies… So, do you remember something in particular?

RB: Oh, the environment was just fabulous. I mean, for me it was just a dream come true because I was older than most students. I’d been in the Navy. So, I already knew a little bit about the world. And what I found at Scripps was that there were just amazing opportunities for students. I could get shipped, I could write proposals to get on a ship and do research, all by myself. I had faculty advisors, but I was like a free agent, really.

And so, I just went crazy (laughs). At first, I was a teaching assistant, but then instead of becoming – I became a research assistant, but I was assigned to DSDP, so I became a research assistant at DSDP. I worked for this this guy, and we just did research together.

Rodey during a dredging expedition in the East Pacific Rise. Photos courtesy of Rodey Batiza.

BMR: So, was there a lot of money, there?

RB: A lot of money for students, a lot of money for research projects, independent research projects… As you say, it was a lot the ONR (Office of Naval Research) money, but also NSF money, and all kinds of money.

BMR: How did you first get involved in in scientific ocean drilling, then? The first time you knew about it?

RB: The first time was when I became a research assistant as a graduate student with DSDP, because I used to meet with that guy at the DSDP office, where he had his office. So, this is where we met to discuss things. It was just up the street from my office. You know, if you’ve been to Scripps, you’ll see there’s the main campus, and then there’s a road called La Jolla boulevard, I think, and then right up here is the old DSDP building. We use to meet there, and that got me introduced to all the people that had to do with the drilling program at Scripps.

So later, through them, I met other people. And then, eventually I was invited to participate in a drilling leg after I graduated. That was very exciting. The two co-chief scientists and other scientists, some from Europe – you spent two months at sea together, you become friends and colleagues, and those are the people that after that, they hired me in their departments. I had sabbaticals in France with people, and we traded houses, in Hawaii and France. And he came to Hawaii, and we went to France…

BMR: Who was him? I was studying the history of seafloor exploration in France for some time, so I’m familiar with some of the people there.

RB: He worked at IFREMER. His name was Roger Hekinian. He was a petrologist like me. He is very well-known in oceanography. He is Armenian. Very wonderful men.

BMR: I didn’t track him, but I met some of the early scientists at the CNEXO, like Xavier le Pichon.

RB: Oh, yeah. Well, when I was a graduate student at Scripps, le Pichon was there as a visitor. So, I met him at Scripps. And also, the other guy…

BMR: Yves Lancelot?

RB: Oh, I know him very well. For many years.

BMR: And her wife, Edith Vincent Lancelot, she was at Scripps as well.

RB: Oh, yes, I knew her very well. I knew her from before they were married. She’s terrific. And Yves was wonderful, too. When we went to Paris he was away, so he let us stay at his apartment (laughs). Really wonderful people.

BMR: So, at this point, you were at Scripps and you started to get involved in the DSDP. How different was the DSDP compared to the other programs that came afterwards? I know that you were involved in all of them…

RB: It was not that different. All of the important things, I think, stayed the same throughout. The expeditions were about two months. That didn’t change. The ship changed. It went from being the Glomar Challenger to being the JOIDES Resolution. So, different ship, different captains, different engineers… But a lot of the people were the same. A lot of the drilling engineers were the same.

The scientific advisory structure always was changing. International partners were joined, and the names of the committees changed all the time, and they were different. But it was still, the community submitting proposals, some organization reviewing the proposals and rating them. And then, according to geography or according to scientific importance, the things would be drilled. Chief scientist would be chosen, the chief scientist would put together a group of scientists, shipboard scientists – usually 20 or 30 of them. And all go to sea together for a couple months, do all this work, take samples home and study the samples, and write up the volumes and – then, you’d be done.

BMR: It’s impressing that these things have been continuous over the years. It makes you feel that the program has been really the same.

RB: Well, it was a very successful formula. And there was never really any reason to change it, other than to adapt to small differences and things. But, the fundamental thing of having these two month legs, with a bunch of scientists that didn’t necessarily know each other, that has always been the same. And that has been one of the most wonderful things about it, because it’s like a little university at sea. And, you know, graduate students get to know famous professors, and, everybody gets to know everybody. And it’s just wonderful. It makes a career.

BMR: Yes, I could actually see this in person recently; I was for a few weeks on Chikyu during the IODP 405 expedition.

RB: How was the food?

BMR: Great. Too much good food (both laugh).

RB: Oh, I know! They have great food. I remember the food was just delicious. Sushi, sashimi… (both laugh)

BMR: So, all these things that I’ve heard several times from different people, on the relations that are built on the ship, I could really experience that. And you see, you know, why scientific ocean drilling is so important for so many people. Because there’s a social dimension that it’s not in other programs. You need to live together with the other people, floating at sea…

RB: Yeah, I know. It’s a little bit like, if you talk to people that go to Antarctica, it’s a little bit like that.

BMR: I think someone has already told me about this.

RB: If you’re an American, or a Russian, or a European, you go to your particular thing in Antarctica; but you’re there with a group, and it’s a group of people that don’t necessarily know each other, but you stay there for 2 or 3 months, or even more. It’s kind of the same.

BMR: And also, the nice thing in scientific ocean drilling is that scientists follow up.

RB: You have post-cruise meetings.

BMR: Yes, up to the point that the managerial positions are occupied by people who has been previously involved in the expeditions, and they work for ensuring that the future of scientific ocean drilling will continue like that.

RB: Yeah. It’s hard to think of things that are similar to it. I mean, I think it’s somewhere unique.

BMR: So, that’s how you got hooked to scientific ocean drilling, after experiencing it.

RB: Oh yeah. I loved that. I love going to sea. I’ve spent 6 or 7 years of my life at sea (laughs). Lots of expeditions – some drilling, but many not. I love going to sea, I love studying the ocean; and with ocean drilling, you can study the third dimension, which is impossible otherwise. So, it’s very exciting.

BMR: At which point did you shift to management, from science?

RB: I had a rotator position. So, I graduated from Scripps in 1977, and then I worked for nine years at the Washington University in Saint Louis. Then, I went to Northwestern [University], and then, University of Hawaii for twelve years. Meanwhile, in 1984, seven years after my PhD, I did a rotator at NSF for one year in drilling. After my time in Hawaii, my wife and I had a son who we decided should learn that he has to wear shoes (laughs).  So, we decided we would move back to the mainland. And, it just so happened that at the time, there was a position at NSF that was open. So, I called my old friend at NSF and said, “Well, I think I’m moving to the mainland. Do you think I could be eligible for this position that’s available?”. He said, “yes”. And, you know, I’d been in academia for over 20 years. I thought, “I’ve gotten millions of dollars from NSF. Maybe I can give back, just give back”. So, I wanted to give back to the community, which had been so nice to me. I thought, “this is perfect”.

BMR: Essentially, it’s half of your career doing science – you said twenty years, so twenty years in science and a bit more than twenty years in administration, in NSF.

RB: In NSF, I had fifteen years. In 1984 I was a rotator but just for one year. And then, I went in 1999 to 2014. Then, I retired. So, I had little over 20 years in academia – if you count graduate school – and that sort of counts – that adds another five years. Then, fifteen years at NSF and of that, for five years I was Program Manager, and ten years was Management.

BMR: What was the difference between program management and management?

RB: In program management, you’re managing money of a program. So, you make decisions about who gets the money. In drilling, same thing. In management, you have to go to a one-month school. It’s four weeks of training. And, if you graduate, you’re in what’s called SES, which is Senior Executive Service. SES it’s like a different pay grade, different everything. Then, you can become a manager. Many managers have to be SAS. You can’t just be a program manager. You have to get this extra training.

BMR: So, at that point you are an NSF’s representative, and I guess you have people below you.

RB: Yeah. I had ten program managers that reported to me. As I used to tell people, “Now that I’m in management, it means that I don’t do anything useful” (laughs).

BMR: How the scientific part of your career was related to scientific ocean drilling?

RB: I studied oceanic volcanism. And so, I was very interested in the mantle source that produced mid-ocean ridge volcanoes, versus hotspot volcanoes, versus other kinds of volcanoes in the ocean. And there were several kinds. Some of them were drilled by ODP and IODP.

So, [DSDP] Leg 61 – Leg 61 was interesting, because it was supposed to drill the oldest seafloor it was available to drill. It was Jurassic in age, based on magnetic anomalies. So, the idea was to go and drill, and see if anything was different back then, in terms of the crystal structure. So, we went there and we drilled it, in Nauru Basin. And after a little bit of sediment, we got into this very fresh volcanic rock that was much younger than predicted, and we drilled almost a kilometer of that, and never got to the bottom of it. So, the results were totally unexpected. The people that were looking at the seismic data from the cruises that got the data, had to continually reinterpret everything (laughs) because it was nothing from what they predicted it would be. And so, we discovered later that probably this volcanic section was part of the Ontong Java plateau, but it was just much lower in elevation. It wasn’t as thick. But it turns out the lava types were very similar to what was found on the Ontong Java. It’s a sort of special, unusual kind of basalt. That was very exciting.

After that, we were trying to find a way to drill into ocean crust, using instead of the rotary cone bits, which make a big hole like that, and the core is inside that; try to use diamond coring, so we’d have much smaller curve, and more core. We had a Leg testing diamond coring system. That was the [ODP] Leg 142; it’s way later. I was chief scientist on that. I was very interested in the development of that because I was interested in writing proposals to drill into the basalt, and get thick sections. So, I did that, and that was a total failure (laughs).

Our logo for the expedition was a little thing like this with a little apple core – no core (laughs). We got no core.

BMR: You mean it didn’t work at all, the diamond bit?

RB: No, it didn’t work. And it turned out the reason it didn’t work was that, when it was being transported to the ship, it was being offloaded from a truck onto a railroad car to be transported. And they dropped it. It bent, and they didn’t report that it was dropped. So, we discovered that later. So, it was bended, and it was turning funny.

BMR: Wow. It’s a pity, because there’s so much money and effort put into it…

RB: And all the people. There was a whole science party. We wrote some papers, it was okay… Well, we didn’t get any core, but we got little chunks, little pieces. Glass pieces. We were able to analyze those, and we could tell when we went from one flow into another flow… So, we were making progress. I think we got down maybe 15m or 20m, maybe 3 or 4 flows. So, we could do stuff with that. That was sort of fun. I can’t remember what year it was, but after that, I think I went to NSF.

[interruption, change location]

BMR: We were talking about the relationship between your career and scientific ocean drilling. And you were explaining about the DSDP leg with the Diamond Coring System, but it didn’t work.

RB: No, it was a terrible failure. And so, they abandoned it. Which was too bad, because it was a lot of development, many years of development of trying to get a system. It’s kind of like the systems that mining companies use on land. You need a fairly stable platform, so the drilling platform was a good idea. But after that, they abandoned it, which was too bad because it had so much promise. And if they hadn’t dropped it, it probably would have worked fine (laughs).

BMR: What happened after that? Did you continue with this line of research?

RB: Well, no. They didn’t continue the engineering development. So that was stopped. It was just rotary coring drilling, as best as you could.

BMR: I was thinking more on you – how did you continue with your research?

RB: My research in the drilling program… Well, Leg 61 was actual research, because those were that big column of rock. So, I wrote lots of papers about that. DCS, not so much. But I had my own research that was going on all the time anyway, with cruises from NSF, and ONR.

I used to get funded by NSF and ONR because I was working a lot on seamounts, little ocean volcanoes that stick up into the water column. And ONR used to like to put instruments on them for listening or things like that.

BMR: Did that work have some relation to your previous job, in the US Navy’s submarines?

RB: A little bit; that’s why ONR was interested in my work. Because they like to listen for Russian submarines. And so, if I studied seamounts, I could study which ones were stable, or which ones were active – volcanically and seismically active. So that would be a good idea to put things. And so, my studying seamounts sort of paralleled with ONR’s interest.

Two things they used to do that was good: They used to give me money for ships, and stuff like that, students. But they’d also let me look at classified maps, secret maps that they made with SeaBeam, before SeaBeam… A long time before, SeaBeam was just military. And then, academia was able to get it about 20 years ago. But before that, the Navy had these fabulous maps. And I could get to see the maps. And then I could have a cruise, and sample all of these amazing things that I saw on the maps.

BMR: How different were the maps you got in academia, and the secret military ones? For example, seamounts that you couldn’t see in bathymetric maps, you could spot them in the Navy maps…

RB: That’s correct. Huge detail, on the military maps; and hardly any detail on the conventional maps.

BMR: Were you allowed to publish those results?

RB: No, you could only publish them if you changed the coordinates. And I thought that was unethical, so (laughs). But then I could go later with SeaBeam – when it was declassified, I could go with SeaBeam and map the seamounts that I had sampled a long time ago, and then I could publish those maps. So, it all turned out okay (laughs).

BMR: This is very interesting, actually. There’s been a lot of studies in the history of oceanography analyzing how military funding contributed to the development of ocean sciences in the US, during the Cold War.

RB: Scripps, in particular, had a very early relation with the Navy. Many of the first people that were there, at that Scripps, were funded directly by the Navy. People like Walter Munk that discovered ocean currents, and waves…

BMR: Well, that’s why probably the U.S. became such a big player in ocean sciences, especially in physical oceanography, it received huge governmental support during that time.

RB: Yeah, you’re right, physical oceanography was very important to ONR. But later on, chemical oceanography and even biological oceanography, and marine geology. ONR was interested in a lot of it.

BMR: So, ONR was kind of funding the research they thought that was relevant for them.

RB: Yeah. It was.

BMR: You could work with them as far as you weren’t like disclosing confidential information.

RB: Exactly. So, when I was in the Navy, I had a secret clearance because, in communications, you had to have that. But when I left the Navy, they let me keep it. So, when I went to graduate school, I still had a clearance.

BMR: You were the advanced student, there.

RB: I know! I could get information that my professors couldn’t get (laughs) because I had a clearance. But then, there was a guy, that Navy guy that was a spy. And then they took everybody’s clearance away. I forgot the guy’s name, but he was convicted of espionage. After that, they decided too many people had clearances, so they took it away.

BMR: Well, we went into this tangent of the US Navy’s secrecy, but we were talking about your research in scientific ocean drilling and your research on seamounts. What came afterwards? How did you transfer to NSF?

RB: The rotatorship (in NSF) was just an interruption. It was something that I did because I had promised them that I would do it if they needed me. So, they said, “Rodey, we need you”.

BMiR: How come, that?

RB: t was when I was leaving graduate school. I met a guy at Woods Hole who was from NSF. He was there in a kind of a sabbatical, and he said, “Rodey, you should come to NSF”. And I said, “Well, I’d love to do that. But, right now I just have a new job, and I need to get tenure, and publish papers, and do work. But, after I get tenure, if you want me to come to NSF…” And the day after I got tenure, I got a phone call (laughs): “Rodey, you got tenure, didn’t you?” And so, I said, “Sure, I can come to NSF for a year”.

BMR: Why they wanted you there? What kind of things you could contribute there?

RB: They have a thing at NSF that, not all good scientists can be good program managers. And they thought I had good people skills that, you could talk to me and I was okay, and… I wasn’t a jerk (laughs). I wasn’t an egomaniac. I could just be a regular person. And so, that was important at NSF because you’re there to help people, you’re there to help young PI’s, and you’re there to help people adjust to new changes in NSF. And so, I enjoyed doing that. It’s like helping students. Same thing, kind of.

BMR: What kind of things did you learn during that year at NSF?

RB: Well, I learned that you have to be careful what you say. You have to be careful what promises you make. Because people always remember. And, you have to make sure that everybody understands the rules, how things work, and that you don’t pick favorites; there’s a review process, a panel process… It was also, I realized, it was very important to be available to people, for questions and everything. So, I always encouraged people to call me. If they have an idea for something they want to do, “Call me. Let’s talk about it. Maybe I can help you with it somehow”. So, it was fun. I enjoyed it.

BMR: Maybe that’s why they wanted you to continue there, afterwards.

RB: Afterwards that’s why they wanted me to continue there, because I was sort of a known quantity. I mean, they knew that I was okay, and that I was helpful to people.

BMR: Was there some situation, something that you did or… that you made a mistake or regret making any promise…?

RB: No… It was kind of from being in the Navy. In the Navy, you work hard, when you’re in court, you play hard and, you know, you go to bars and have fun… When I was first started going to sea, as a graduate student, I used to get ship time that – I used to write little proposals, and I’d get a ship for a week, and I could go and do something.

RB: All the crew members, at that time, long ago, didn’t like the scientists. They called us ‘f-ing cientificos’. (laughs) They used to call me that. And I said, “Listen, you idiot, I was in the Navy for six years. Don’t call me that. I’m just like you”. (laughs) “Okay”. And then, a lot of the crew members on the ships knew that I was ex-Navy, and they could talk to me about things, and I was okay.

Then, when I started going to sea as an academic, at the end of every cruise, I would have a big party for the crew. In Mexico or wherever we were, I’d rent a bar, and get food, and I’d have this – you know, it costed a couple thousand dollars, so what? I’d have this huge party and all the crew would come. And so then, it became like, “Oh, are you going to go on Rodey’s cruise?” (laughs) People used to be in competition to give me their ships, so that they could have a party. (both laugh)

BMR: Oh, that’s fun. Maybe that’s why you were getting so many cruises, up to making six or seven years of your life.

RB: Well, that’s why the captain didn’t mind marrying me at sea (laughs) because he knew me well from lots of cruises.

BMR: From what you say, I have the feeling that things were much more flexible before. The relationship with the ship, the crew…

RB: I don’t think it’s that different today. If you’re a nice person, people like to go to sea with you and, if you’re a difficult person, they don’t. But they have to because it’s their job, so (laughs). The ship’s crew, is just like on the drillship. The ship’s crew and the science crew are part of the same team. You have to work well together to be successful. And so, you find ways to do it.

BMR: After this year as NSF rotator, you went back to your research position. Was this the time when you moved to Hawaii?

RB: I was in Washington University in Sant Louis when I did the rotator. I did for a year, and then I came back. And, when I came back, a colleague at a nearby institution wanted to hire me. And now I had tenure. The thing is, I was getting paid very little money in Saint Louis. Very little; I was hired at practically nothing. And so, I got big raises, but I was still very low. So, the people at Northwestern wanted to give me twice as much money as I got. I said, “sure!” (laughs).

Plus, the chairman in Saint Louis told me that he didn’t like it, that sometimes I had to go to sea during a teaching semester. I couldn’t always schedule it to be in the summertime, when I was off. So, he was threatening that I might not be able to go to sea at the only time when they could schedule me on the ship. I said, “Well, you’re interfering with my research now”. So, I asked the people in Chicago, “Is it okay if I go to sea in the middle of the semester?”. They said, “go whenever you want!” (laughs), they said, “if you don’t want to teach at all, you don’t have to teach at all. You don’t care” (laughs). I talked to the chairman and I said – because my chairman in Saint Louis was like a military general, he’s always telling me what to do and everything. The chairman in Chicago, he just became chairman then, so I said, “what are you going to do as chairman?”. He said, “As little as I can” (both laugh). And I said, “This sounds great” (laughs).

 That was very fun. But then, I got remarried. I got divorced, when I left Saint Louis, and then I got remarried a couple of years later to Jill [Karsten], and we both got offers from Hawaii. So, “well, this is great”. They wanted to hire us both, so that’s kind of unusual.

BMR: Did you work on any international collaboration, at that time?

RB: Oh, sure! I collaborated with lots of people. Lots of people that I met on the drillship, actually, from other countries. I collaborated with Roger quite a bit; I had students from China, and I collaborated with them, after that, when they graduated. Some of them were teaching in England. I had students from the Philippines, and collaborated with them. We had lots of fun traveling around.

BMR: We can talk more about this period, or we can move to how you got into your NSF management position.

RB: Okay. Well, the position at NSF was when we decided that our son had to learn how to wear shoes. We told him that, that was the bad news, that we were going to leave Hawaii. And we weren’t going to go to the beach anymore. But the good news was, maybe he could get a dog (laughs). So, we got a dog, but I didn’t know what I was going to do, moving back to the mainland. That was sort of a family decision.

BMR: How about your wife?

RB: She got a position at ONR. So, I got a position at NSF, ahead of time; and she was called and got a position at ONR, ahead of time. So, it worked out beautifully. She was a rotator at ONR for three years, and then, she got a position at NSF. Then, we were both at NSF. So, it really worked out well.

BMR: From Hawaii and you called NSF, right?

RB: I called NSF because I was looking through the journals and I saw that there was a vacancy at NSF in Marine Geology and Geophysics, my old program. So, I thought, “I’ll see if they’ll let me apply”. And they said, “Yes, we’ll let you apply. You’ve got the job” (laughs).

BMR: Who was the person in charge, there?

RB: His name was Bruce Malfait. He had been in charge of MG and G program. Then he was in charge of the drilling program. He was my boss when I got the job.

BMR: How was the situation of the program when you went into the management?

RB: It was in good shape. We had good budgets. It was, I would say, very good times. We had lots of money. Then, when we transitioned to the new program, the new IODP, we had plenty of money because we got some new members. We got Brazil to come in, and we got India to come in… And so, we got extra money – we got $2 million a year from Brazil. It was a great arrangement. And they didn’t even care about having scientists on the ship. They wanted to have graduate students on the ship. So, the agency that gave us money was the Graduate Education Agency. It wasn’t even the Scientific Research Agency. So that was great.

BMR: This a very different approach to scientific ocean drilling than Western countries, right?

RB: Yeah.

BMR: Of course, they were interested in having graduate students, but the approach was not that much building a generation of people related to these international programs. Is more like, let’s get the best of all classes and all institutions.

RB: Exactly. I mean, this agency in Brazil was interested in good relationships with all kinds: astronomy projects, biology, genetics, whatever. They just wanted opportunities for their students. Very nice agency. I mean, I don’t know of any agency like that. For graduate education – a whole agency to fund graduate education. Just imagine. They had a huge budget.

BMR: Let me go a bit backwards, when you had that one-year rotatorship at NSF. That was shortly after ODP started. Were you involved or aware of this Glomar Explorer thing? The idea of the US having a riser ship for scientific ocean drilling?

RB: The Glomar Explorer had been involved in recuperating this Russian sub, right? This was not very well known, but many people sort of knew what had happened. So, the idea was that maybe the ship could be modified to become a drillship with a riser. But then, the Japanese came along, and they independently wanted to build a riser vessel. And so, the US kind of lost interest in this other thing. Because, why bother? If Japan is going to provide a state-of-the-art new vessel with a riser, then the program will have availability, if we make an MoU with them and do all that. So that was the motivation for the new change from ODP to IODP. The Europeans wanted to be able to drill in coastal and Arctic regions, in which neither the chicken or the JR could do that. You couldn’t drill shallow water; you couldn’t drill in ice. So, they came in with that idea, and it looked like the perfect thing. This way, you could drill anywhere and somebody could do it. So, sure enough, the ECORD drilled in the Arctic; they drilled Chicxulub… They drilled shallow things that couldn’t be done otherwise. It was very successful. And it was one program. It had governance and scientific decision-making, and it was all one program. It was very nice for a long time.

BMR: It was in this period of the early 2000s where there was a lot of hope and ambition for scientific ocean drilling… And a lot of money.

RB: Yeah. That was wonderful times.

BMR: when you started in NSF, what kind of tasks did you do?

RB: After I was a rotator?

BMR: Yeah.

RB: When I first came, I was in the Marine Geology and Geophysics program. That wasn’t the drilling program; it was in the same section as the drilling program, but it was a separate thing, with its own budget. So, I was just the program manager. I worked for a guy called Bilal Haq, who was the head of that program. I was the petrology guy. So, I did the petrology, and I did that for 3 or 4 years. And then, Bruce Malfait, my previous boss – well, my boss, he retired. His position became open. I applied for his position, and I got his position. That’s when I became a manager.

BMR: Did you do any kind of transition together with Bruce? I mean, did Bruce help you be introduced to the new role as manager?

RB: Bruce recommended me to attend the one-month school. The Ocean Sciences Division could nominate, I think, two people a year to go to this school. So, he nominated me; that was before he retired. So, I think he was anticipating that he would retire and maybe I could take his place. Not very fair system (laughs).

BMR: Well, I don’t know how things should work, but it makes sense that you want to make sure that someone you can trust, and someone you think can do a good job, is introduced position, and train to be in that position.

RB: Yeah, I think that’s right. There weren’t a lot of people… There were hardly any people that came to NSF at the end of their career the way I did. That’s very unusual. Most people go to NSF early in their careers, stay at NSF, sometimes for their whole career. So, it was very unusual to have somebody come in after 20 years in academia, come to NSF. I mean, the director and assistant director looked at my CV and said, “whoa!” (laughs), “What is this? What’s this guy doing?”.

BMR: How did your experience in academia was helpful for your new role?

RB: In NSF, the program managers have a lot of power and authority to determine how to spend money. And so, what that means is that you want the program managers to be good scientists themselves, because if they’re not good scientists, they won’t make good scientific decisions about spending. So, it’s always nice to have somebody who’s a good scientist be a program manager. That was my advantage. And that’s why, I think, they like me. I had a hundred publications, or whatever, and I could give them my CV and they go, “Wow! You publish papers in Nature Magazine! You must be okay!” (laughs).

BMR: I guess a good scientist is also someone who’s not only focused on their own research, but it’s also a person who has a wide perspective on the science that is being developed.

RB: That’s right. At NSF, they even had a program to program managers that every four or five years they could take a semester or a year, and go and do research somewhere. And it was to maintain research, if you were doing research, you’ve got to maintain it and stay a good scientist while you’re there at NSF, doing administrative stuff.

BMR: That actually sounds good, it helps you not to get rusty and to keep into the science community.

RB: Exactly.

BMR: And that’s why you’re now in AGU! (laughs)

RB: I know (laughs). Many program managers took advantage of that, and it was it was a very nice thing, really. As a federal employee, to get time off like that. I’ve been a member of AGU for over 50 years (laughs).

BMR: So, do you want to continue on Thursday?

RB: Sure. Yeah.

BMR: Thank you very much.

RB: Thank you.

---

PART 2

Disclaimer

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.

The primary goal of this transcript is to capture the spoken words and memories of the interviewee as accurately as possible. Minor editing and polishing works have been performed to enhance clarity and readability while maintaining the authenticity of spoken discourse, including non-standard grammar, inconsistencies, repetitions, and pauses. The interviewee has been allowed to review and edit the transcript, and they have approved the publication of this version before posting it.

The reader must be aware that memories of an event can vary between individuals and may evolve over time due to various factors, such as subsequent experiences, interactions with others, and personal emotions.

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Please cite the interview as:

Interview of Rodey Batiza by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2024 December 12, Westin Hotel, Washington, D.C. (USA) [link]

BMR: Let’s start the second part. The other day we talked about the science you were doing, so today we can focus on the second part of your career, when you worked at NSF. Unless you want to explain something about the more scientific part of your career.

RB: No, I think we covered that pretty well.

BMR: We talked about how you supported post-cruise parties. That’s important (both laugh)

RB: Yes, it’s important. It’s important for the crew to be happy, because things always go wrong on the ships. And if the crew doesn’t like you, they can stay broken (laughs). If you want it to be fixed, the crew has to work hard…

BMR: Also, the ship is a tiny place where you live with a lot of people for a long time. I guess that especially some years ago, when there was not easy communication with the shore, it was even more important to keep good relations.

RB: That’s right. And, you know, the ship works 24 hours a day. So oftentimes, when I was at sea as chief scientist, I didn’t sleep. I didn’t sleep for 30 days (laughs). And so, it helps to have lots of friends in the crew when you’re not operating necessarily 100%.

BMR: Then, can you please remind me how and when you got into NSF? I remember it’s when you decided that your kids should learn to wear shoes instead of flipflops.

RB: That’s right (laughs).

BMR: And then you moved to Washington, DC.

RB: Yeah. And I was working in the MG&G Program. That’s one of the programs as opposed to drilling, which was a separate program.

BMR: Which year was this?

RB: 1999.

BMR: So, almost changing the program from ODP to IODP… But you were not in the drilling program. What relation had your division with the ocean drilling program?

RB: We had a lot of scientific interests in common, between MG&G and IODP, but they had separate budget, separate people, and everything was sort of separate. We had our own our own panels, our own programs… Different interests. But lots of communication back and forth.

BMR: Which kind of communication? I just want to understand what was happening in the NSF. I understand that NSF as a funding agency gets money from the Congress, and it diverts it between different groups, which then provide the money to their scientists, right? So, you interacted, were aware of the science that they were doing, the people involved… but you did not collaborate.

RB: We were sort of exchanging information because – things like site surveys were funded by MG&G, even though they have to do with drilling. The scientific importance had to be acknowledged by MG&G, because if it’s not scientifically important, then why would you want to drill it? If it’s silly (laughs).

BMR: One thing that surprises me is that scientific ocean drilling had kind of an equivalent importance than MG&G, which probably was much wider. ODP was one program, one platform; but MG&G division was probably funding different programs, with different tools.

RB: Scientific ocean drilling had the drilling ship, and when it was the Integrated Ocean Drilling, it was multi-vessels, multi-platforms. MG&G had other ships in the so-called UNOLS fleet – that’s the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System. Something like 20 different ships, in the US, sometimes owned by NSF, sometimes owned by universities, but the operating expenses were paid for by NSF. Individual scientists working in universities usually participated in both. They had their own research with UNOLS vessels. And then they’d also write drilling proposals, and try to get drill time to drill their science, as part of drilling. So, it was very much one community, even though it’s two programs.

BMR: What was your job, at that department?

RB: In MG&G, we would have usually three deadlines per year. Proposals would come in –typically about 100 proposals per deadline. Our job was to get the proposals reviewed. You send it out to people to review. And then, you also have a panel which reads the reviews, reads the proposals, reads the reviews… And then discusses the ranking of the various proposals, and gives it a grade. 1 is excellent, 5 is poor. Usually most of them are 1 and 2, sometimes 3. So, we used to say that NSF was the only organization where ‘good’ is ‘poor’ (laughs). Because good was 3, and good was not good.

Then, we rank all the proposals. Usually most of them were between 1 and 3. The funding rate was approximately 30%, when I started. And then it continually became less and less, as things become more competitive. It’s now, I think, around 22 or 23.

BMR: I was precisely going to ask you, how the funding available evolved? You can focus on what you prefer, in general terms for NSF, or specifically for scientific ocean drilling.

RB: Well, a lot depends on politics and how much money Congress will give any agency. NSF is always competing with other agencies, including NASA, NIH, NOAA… all kinds of other agencies that are involved with science. And so, you can look at funding trends through the years, NSF has generally increased with time. Starting in the 50s and 60s, it was maybe 1 billion. Now it’s probably 7 or 8 billion. So, quite a lot of money. But then, it gets divided. The Director of the NSF has to determine how much to give each directorate – they’re called directorates. There’s an assistant director for each directorate. I think there are seven directorates: one is MPS, mathematical, physical, and chemical sciences; there’s GEO, and it includes ocean sciences, which includes marine geology and geophysics, biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, and physical oceanography. [Within GEO] There’s Earth Sciences, EAR, which includes all of geology on land – not in the ocean, but on land. Then there’s atmospheric sciences (AGS), and that includes some space science. And then, there’s polar programs (OPP), which includes Antarctic and Arctic research. That’s GEO. So, that’s one part of NSF.

GEO gets quite a bit of money, because it’s expensive to do geosciences. It requires ships, or Antarctic base, or icebreakers, aircraft for atmospheric science… So, it’s kind of expensive. It gets quite a bit of money. And it’s been growing over the years. You build new ships, some with very specialized capabilities, like seismic ships to do seismic work at sea, with long streamers and they bounce sound off the internal of the Earth. So, drilling is part of that.

BMR: How did you get involved into Ocean Drilling, at NSF?

RB: When I first when went to NSF, when I was a rotator in 1984, I went to MG&G. So, when I went back in 1999, I went to MG&G, and I was there for 3 or 4 years. Then my boss retired – he was in charge of MG&G and drilling. When he retired, I applied for his position. I was successful. So then, I was in charge of MG&G and drilling, both. That’s how I became involved with drilling.

BMR: You mentioned the other day that your boss was Bruce Malfait. Could you tell me a bit about him? I’ve heard a lot about him, but maybe you can just describe me a bit how he was, how he worked… How much he knew about scientific ocean drilling.

RB: Bruce was a very amazing person. Very, very smart. Really, really smart. And quiet. He didn’t talk very much. He would mostly sit in a meeting, and not say anything. But he’s listening to everything, and thinking about everything, and having opinions about everything. But he talked softly and never was very loud. He was a very good person to talk to, because you could learn a lot from – well, from watching what he did, but also from just talking to him. We’d go to lunch together almost every day, and talk about stuff… Then, on Fridays we’d have beers in the afternoon, after work. We’d have happy hour and (laughs) kind of like in Japan. He was just a very amazing person. Just cared a lot about science, cared a lot about good science… Spending money wisely to learn.

He was himself a very good scientist. He studied marine geology. I can’t remember if he went to Lamont or if he was somewhere else. I think he was at Lamont, and I can’t remember who his advisor was… But his advisor was a very smart guy, too, who studied seismic stuff. So, he studied a thing called the Cocos Ridge, which is so-called East Seismic Ridge. It’s a big ridge, but it’s not a plate boundary. Usually, they’re built by volcanism and have sediment on top. So, anyway, he studied those seismic ridges.

When I went as a rotator, he had a sabbatical. And I think he went to Scripps, to study some other stuff. So, me and me and another guy, we’re sort of in charge of MG&G while he was gone. He sort of trusted us, to take care of things (laughs).

BMR: It was a good thing for the scientific ocean drilling programs, to have him in charge from the beginning.

RB: Yes. He was in charge of ODP, and he was the one who did the transition from ODP to IODP, Integrated Ocean Drilling Program. That was with the Japanese, and with ECORD. And he was the one, really, that put that together. And wrote the MoU with Japan, and did all the negotiation with the Japanese on how to put the program together; how to make the scientific advisory structure, and the governance, and all that. He did he did that. That was his creation. Very smart guy.

He built something that was very well built. The structure of it was very carefully thought out, and it wasn’t too different from the previous drilling. I mean, many of the committees were sort of the same thing. They were new, they had new names, but they still had the same function. So, it was very intelligently put together.

BMR: Did you learn something from Bruce Malfait that you later applied to your work?

RB: Oh, everything! Sure. I learned everything from him. Well, him and another guy who was his boss, his name was Don Heinrichs. I’m not sure if you’ve heard that name.

BMR: I think I did, yes.

RB: Don Heinrichs was the division director of ocean sciences for a long time. He and Bruce sort of had a partnership, and they had things they cared about a lot. Heinrichs cared a lot about seismology and having seismic ships. Bruce cared a lot about drilling, but that also required lots of seismic information to try to predict what would you get, if you drilled. It’s a little bit of magic of trying to do that, but you could do it with seismic reflection and seismic refraction. So, together, they sort of ran MG & G and drilling for probably 30 years.

BMR: That’s more than the entire ODP program.

RB: Yeah. From the 60s, 70s, and 80s, it was Heinrichs. And then, above Malfait and Heinrichs, there was another guy called Bob Wall. He was, he was also a very good guy and a very popular person. During panel meetings, we would always have a dinner, and we would always go to a restaurant called the Great Wall (laughs). It was a Chinese restaurant, but it was the Great Wall (laughs). And so, Wall would always come, and it was always funny. (laughs) The Great Wall. Very nice guy, very friendly…

BMR: I see you had a very close relationship with all these people. The community building is not only among the people in the ship. Also, within the NSF, leadership people…

RB: Oh, all the community, sure. And the NSF program people, and leadership, was strongly concerned about building the community and having community support for the things that NSF did. Because, you know, all the creative activities really come from the community. And the community are the people who make discoveries, and discover new things about the planet. And then, NSF tries to pick that up, and give it direction, and give it funding for new discoveries. But it’s a team effort between NSF and the community, working together. And so, people come and go, rotators come and go… Go back to the community, teach people about NSF, encourage good people to go to NSF, and then come back to the community. So, it’s very fluid.

BMR: Has this been like this also in the more recent years? I mean, is this something that has been happening since the start of the 60s to these days?

RB: Yeah. It’s still the same now, with new people coming and going. The thing is; to be a rotator, you really need to be there all the time. And if you’re living somewhere else, it really doesn’t work very well, because you’re not talking to your colleagues, you’re not learning from them, you’re sort of isolated and it doesn’t work out too well.

BMR: I understand that, as you just said, if you’re meeting your colleagues every Friday… I think it’s a bit like the business culture in Japan.

RB: I was always fascinated by Japan, because we used to visit Tokyo often and go to MEXT, go to different places and… You’ve probably seen this, but at MEXT they had like a big room…

BMR: I haven’t been there, so you can explain me.

RB: Oh, you should go! It’s fascinating. This big room with all these people, all these desks, maybe a hundred desks, a hundred people and no partitions. I mean, it’s not partitioned, it’s just open. And so, everybody’s working, and then there’s like a little stage where the head of the place has a desk, and he’s looking out onto the sea of people. He’s working also. And it’s just amazing (laughs). And everybody runs. They don’t walk. They run to get different things (laughs).

BMR: That’s true, I also found it… in shops, for example (laughs).

RB: And all these people would be running around… But then, when it was quitting time – and people worked long, long hours; they’d get there early in the morning and work till dark – but then, sometimes you’d go out and have drinks, and they’d just totally drink, get drunk and just have fun (laughs).

BMR: The relations change, you don’t see this difference between boss and subordinates.

RB: I know, and I thought that was so wonderful. We had the same thing at NSF, too. You’d go out for happy hour, and usually the assistant director for all of GEO would come, and that pretty high up was talking with rotators, and talking with the lowest people… And it was all very friendly.

BMR: How was the situation of the ocean drilling program when you enter the position of Bruce Malfait, the director position?

RB: It was toward the end, the last few years of the Integrated Ocean Drilling Program and the planning stages for the second IODP, which was mostly up to the creation of — that was mostly up to me and my colleagues from the international community, different funding agencies. The MEXT people, the people from Europe, the people from other member countries – Korea and Brazil… We would have these meetings of IODP Council, and plan the future. [We] set up the MoU, and all that.

BMR: Can you tell me about that period? What were the challenges, the difficult things to agree on? I kind of know what happened, but I’d like to hear from you, and learn about why these decisions that were taken.

RB: There was that incident of the big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. You remember that?

BMR: The Deepwater Horizon?

RB: Yeah. That’s why we wanted to change the name. We didn’t want drilling in the name because drilling had a had a bad reputation, because that was a drill rig… And drilling was not a good word. So, we made an Ocean Discovery, instead. But we wanted to keep the same acronym. It was the guy from Australia who was extremely helpful with this, because he was usually very contrary; he didn’t like anything. Everything that you brought up, the guy from Australia was saying, “No, no, that’s a terrible idea”. Very smart guy. And his position and his agency were higher than most of us. So, he had a more important leadership position within the Australian Funding Agency, ANZIC. But when I came up with the International Ocean Discovery Program, many people hated it. But he was great. He said, “I think Rodey’s right. We have to make sure that that the US people, the US Congress, views this in a good way. And so, let’s make it Discovery instead of Drilling”.

If not for him, I think it wouldn’t have worked. That happened. And then we had a new MoU, which didn’t include Japan because we couldn’t agree – I mean, we couldn’t agree on some fundamental things. So, what we did is, instead of having – I mean, it was still US, Japan, and ECORD, but we just didn’t have an MoU that Japan had signed. But we did have a section that was ‘things that the Japan agreed to’, and it was most of the important scientific things. But some financial things, especially, made it impossible to have an MoU that the agencies could all sign together.

BMR: What were these fundamental things? Were all of them related to money?

RB: It had to do with money. What Bruce Malfait and the Japanese had agreed, that in the first program with Chikyu, Japan would pay for the cost of Chikyu; the US would pay for the cost of the US drillship. And that the US and Japan would have equal financial contributions to the operations once the vessels were built.

The problem with that was that Chikyu was hugely expensive, compared to the US vessel. And so, basically the US and Japan sort of agreed that Japan would lie about how much they were spending. So, Japan would say they were spending X, but they were really spending X plus Y. And the U.S. would look the other way and say, “okay, we’re spending X, also”. And we really were spending X, but we had a much cheaper drillship.

After a while this sort of deception of equal contributions just became too much, for the US. The US didn’t like the idea that we had to have this friction as a fundamental part of the program. So, we said, “No, equal contribution no more. No more equal contribution”. And Japan didn’t like that. So, that’s why we didn’t sign an MoU. I finally told Shingo Shibata, my equal partner, I said – I wrote him a little note at a meeting, I said, “No MoU”. Then I gave him a little note. He read (gestures expression of surprise), and that was it. I said, “We’re finished. No MoU. Unless you change this equal contribution thing”. And they wouldn’t do it. Bruce Malfait was very upset about that.

BMR: About the fact that there was not a new MoU, to keep the integrated program?

RB: Right.

BMR: Sorry, I think there’s something I’ve missed. Equal contribution, but Japan was paying more for its ship?

RB: Yes. And so, they were having fewer operations because they didn’t have enough money to operate the ship. Because after a while, the Japanese government said, “this cost too much, so you can’t operate it 12 months a year because it’s too expensive”. So, they were actually doing less than they had promised they would do – because they had promised they would work all the time, but they couldn’t.

BMR: There’s something about these relations, especially for scientific ocean drilling, that I find very interesting. There are strong social bonds between the people, NSF with the scientists… So this willingness to collaborate it’s not only pragmatic, to move the program forward, but you want to keep good relation to this people. How do you balance this personal side of things, with the professional decisions?

RB: Well, in the same way that NSF works with the U.S. community, there’s also the international community, which consists of global scientists with common interests, scientific interests, working together, collaborating either… The international community has ships also, regular oceanographic vessels, and scientists – Germany-US, Japan-US… Every combination you can imagine, everybody and everybody working with everybody… Is a very real thing, also. And organizations like AGU support the international community.

So, the international community has a strong desire also to work together to solve problems. And drilling is part of that. Drilling doesn’t sort of exist in a vacuum. I mean, it’s very much part of what goes on anyway. And drilling is just another tool that you have to use; a very powerful tool that is uniquely capable of getting records, like books, really, with pages, that tell the history of the ocean basins.

BMR: After you said to the MEXT representative that no MoU for the Discovery program, how the relationship with Japan and ECORD, the other partners, evolved?

RB: We were still all working together very cordially. We had friendships, important friendships, amongst all of the people that were… It was it was 30 or 40 people in the IODP Council from all the different countries; 26 countries or whatever. Everybody got along very well with everybody else. Once it became impossible to have an MoU, we started thinking specifically about what we could do that would be next best. And so, next best would be having a section of things that we agreed on, as part of the MoU. But it wouldn’t be signed by MEXT, but it would be signed by ECORD and the US, and the other member countries. And Japan, we had a section that we had negotiated with the Japanese, that they were okay with it, too.

So, in a way, we sort of still had an MoU – sort of. It wasn’t an official document signed by all the agencies, but we still had Chikyu as part of the program, and ECORD.

Visit of two NSF representatives (Rodey, wearing a yellow shirt and David Conover, with a dark jacket) to the scientific drillship JOIDES Resolution during IODP Expedition 334 (2011). Photos by John Beck, courtesy of IODP/TAMU.

BMR: How the communication with higher levels worked, in NSF? Did you communicate with higher levels of the NSF, the Congress? I’m thinking in terms of, you are making decisions on behalf of the NSF and the US community, but I was thinking whether you get some guidelines on the direction, how to proceed…

RB: That’s a very good question. Within the US and NSF, it was a little bit tricky, because the director was the one who had to sign the MoU. And so, the director cares a lot about, “What’s this MoU all about? Why should I sign it? Give me some good reasons why I should sign this”. So, it was a little bit of a game, to try to talk to the director; tell the director what we wanted the director to know and… We never had… Well, we would have people that were high up in MEXT or in the Japanese science community come over to NSF. And I would set up a meeting with the director; and we would have a meeting with the director; and the director would ask questions and be nice, and talk about how wonderful everything was… That would happen. And then, the director eventually would sign the MoU. But that was really in the absence of sort of direct communication between the top of MEXT and the top of NSF. That didn’t really happen.

BMR: But because it’s not meant to happen? It’s not designed to happen? Or because in scientific ocean drilling for some reason, there was no communication between the higher levels of both funding agencies?

RB: I don’t know. I really don’t know. And that’s because, I don’t really know how MEXT works very well. In NSF, there was a lotof communication this way between the director’s office and the GEO assistant director’s office. And, of course, lots of communication between the aides, the assistant director’s office and the program managers, like me. A lot of good communication there, and familiarity with the issues at that level. Less familiarity as you go above that. And, as far as I know, there just wasn’t that much communication between the director of the NSF and the director of MEXT. I don’t know why that is, but that just didn’t happen.

BMR: I don’t know a lot about MEXT neither because I haven’t interviewed anyone yet. It’s more difficult than at NSF because they rotated every few years.

RB: Right. And then there’s JAMSTEC, too, which is the operator. So, a lot of the communication was with JAMSTEC rather than with the funding agency, MEXT. But there were always people from MEXT at all our meetings, and JAMSTEC.

BMR: Was there someone in particular from JAMSTEC with whom you interacted more?

RB: Oh, sure. Nobu [Eguchi], obviously for many years. Kiyoshi [Suyehiro], whom you also know, he was always very closely involved with everything. So, these were the guys that we depended on, really, to go back and forth with MEXT, and with to talk to MEXT, and to talk to us… We all sort of talked together. We’d go out and have beers. They were all terrific people. They were all somewhat Bruce-like. Bruce Malfait-like. Yeah. Because they all wanted good things to happen. And, good things did happen. A lot of really good science was done.

BMR: You can see it now, also. I’ve been attending different meetings of scientific ocean drilling, and you really see a willingness to move forward collaboration even if it’s not always easy to make it happen.

RB: Right. Everybody is always working hard, to try to create things that work with the resources that are available. And in this case, the US failed to have enough money; but also, ECORD didn’t have enough money. That’s part of the reason why the US ended the drilling program – was, ECORD kept decreasing its level of support for the JR.

BMR: Now, that some years have passed and we can evaluate the things that worked best and the things that didn’t, from your perspective, what would you have done or decided differently?

RB: I think we did the best we could, collectively. When a bowl of soup costs $5, and you’ve only got $3, you can’t buy a bowl of soup anymore (laughs). And so, that was the problem, really. Just the money problem.

BMR: What do you think was the best decision that was taken at that moment?

RB: To me, it was a failure of… A failure of education. I think that people in the Biden administration were not knowledgeable enough about what ocean drilling actually did, that was useful. I don’t know why that was the case, I mean, maybe it was the problem with the director of NSF not communicating properly with OSTP [Office of Science and Technology Policy] and OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. Maybe it was a failure of OSTP and OMB to gather information from other parts of NSF, rather than the director.

NSF has had some bad directors. And GEO Directorate has had some bad assistant directors that were just not very good, not very knowledgeable about drilling.

BMR: As far as I can see, for 40 years of scientific ocean drilling, there has been people who understood the importance of drilling. Because of course, this is one more tool for scientific research, but at the same time, it’s a unique and exclusive tool.

RB: Absolutely. Things like past climate change, that’s the only way to learn about that. The Ocean Drilling Program, if you look at the history of the ocean drilling program, the scientific discoveries that have been made with drilling, it’s one of the most successful scientific endeavors of all time. The number of Science papers, the number of Nature papers, is unmatched. Take any NASA mission, take any NOAA mission… This has been better than any of them.

BMR: And also, the potential for expanding and continuing collaborations with other countries. You get thirty people on a ship, and they would work together, and produce scientific results. I don’t think it happens in space research at the scale that happens with scientific ocean drilling.

RB: Right. I think that’s true. And I think it’s partly because… You know, NASA runs a mission, and it’s run by NASA. And yes, there are university scientists involved to some extent, but not as much as in drilling. In drilling, it’s really the university scientists, geoscientists, that do most of it. I mean, NSF help administer, but they don’t do the work. Whereas a lot of the work on space missions is done at NASA, by government scientists.

BMR: Now that we are talking about collaborations. Was there any relationship or interest, between offshore industries and scientific ocean drilling, during the time you were involved in the management?

RB: Well, that’s a good question. Because of safety reasons, the JR, the Chikyu, and MSPs avoid drilling anywhere where there might be gas or oil, because it would be unsafe. We don’t have a protection from blowouts. So, because we couldn’t drill in areas that have potential – I mean, you the safety panel had to look at any proposed drill site, and say that chances were very small that there would be gas. And you had to constantly monitor methane/ethane ratio. If it got too high, you had to stop drilling. So, there were all kinds of safety reasons to avoid that.

It kind of meant that oil and gas is over here, and scientific drilling is over here, because of just geography of where you can go and where you can’t go. For that reason, there wasn’t a lot of a lot of cross-communication. There were people in the oil and gas industry that were very interested in the results of the drilling program, because if you learn about the history of the oceans, that helps everybody. It helps exploration. It helps science. Even though you have different goals. So, I would say that relationships were very cordial; organizations of exploration-type people had an interest in drilling. The Society of Exploration Geophysics, American Association of Petroleum Geologists… They have national meetings, and there would be talks about drilling and stuff like that. But not a lot of direct.

[interruption]

BMR: Let’s continue talking about the IODP transition.

RB: I think, in retrospect, the transition from the first IODP to the second IODP was probably pretty good. At the time that the second IODP started, the JR was being rebuilt. It was almost a brand-new ship, really. Except of course it wasn’t; it was old. But in terms of drilling capabilities, logging, and all this kind of stuff, it was just A plus. And Chikyu was doing great; MSPs were doing great… Very successful.

We had enough money to do everything pretty well. Chikyu still didn’t operate as much as we wanted, but as long as it was still operating a little bit, we were getting good scientific return. So, I think it was about as good as it could have been, given the resources that we had. It was a ten year program, so it definitely had a start and a finish year. And, when it got to the end, the big question was, “Will it be renewed?” – will there be a third IODP, or whatever you want to call it? That’s when things began to look pretty bad.

That’s when I retired from NSF. I was actually forced to retire, because – (laughs). What happened was that I had a division director who decided that he had three large programs. One was drilling program; the other was the UNOLS vessels, the ships; and the third one was called OOI, Ocean Observing Initiative. And he could only afford two of them. And he thought the drilling should go.

I called Jamie Austin, and I told him what the situation was, and I asked him if he would try to assemble a group of scientific leaders in the ocean community to have like a little committee that, if it looked like drilling was going to end, that I could call him and let him know that it looked like that was going to happen. He could contact that committee. The committee could then contact the whole community, and start writing letters to NSF to say, “No, you can’t do this. It’s too important a program to end”. You somehow have to decide that maybe it won’t be as large as it was, but it can’t end.

So then, at that one internal committee meeting at NSF, my boss said that he was going to recommend ending of the drilling program. So, I called Jamie and soon they were literally thousands of e-mails coming in to NSF (laughs). And my boss found out that that was my doing, and he was not happy (laughs). But I kept it from happening, for a couple years. But I got fired (laughs). So, anyway…

BMR: It kept the program afloat.

RB: For a little while, but eventually the money just ran out. And the new division director that took the place of the one that I had problems with, he likes drilling program, but the money just isn’t there. He likes drilling. He’s this guy, McManus. He’s an interesting guy; he’s a chemical oceanography person. And he was a rotator at NSF before going there. And I always liked him; he’s very nice guy, but he’s a little bit shy.

BMR: So, how do you see the future of all this?

RB: I don’t know. We’ll have to wait and see, I guess. I think if the community succeeds in finding new names for climate change (laughs), which Trump thinks is a hoax, but if we find new names and basically explain carefully why it’s good for the United States, to have a drilling program… The military understands that. The insurance companies understand that. Then, things could be good again. We may have to wait for Trump to go away. But hopefully not. Hopefully things can – the community is pretty smart, and is a pretty international, pretty resourceful. We’ll just have to see. All the talks last night, the role of China… Things could be good again.

BMR: It can be again a unified international program.

RB: I hope so. I mean, it’s been so successful, it would be a shame if it didn’t come back.

BMR: My last question. What’s the most valuable thing, the thing you appreciate the most, from this career related to scientific ocean drilling?

RB: Oh, well! It’s just been so wonderful. I can’t believe they paid me to do this (laughs). They actually paid me to do all this and have all this fun! Enjoyment, and wonderful students, wonderful colleagues internationally… Mostly from the drilling program; not only in my scientific career and academia, but even at NSF; still wonderful colleagues internationally, and from different funding agencies, and Japan, and… Friends. So, a huge, gift. Very wonderful. I feel very fortunate.

Well, it’s been really fun chatting with you.

BMR: Yes. It was great, I really enjoyed it and I will keep a good memory of this.

RB: It’s been very fun.