Stuart Henrys

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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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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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Interview of Alberto Malinverno by Beatriz Martinez-Rius on 2025 October 20 (virtual). [link]

Beatriz Martinez-Rius (BMR): Today is 20^th of October of 2025. I am Beatriz Martinez-Rius, historian of science at JAMSTEC, and I am with Stuart Henrys in a virtual interview. Thank you so much.

Stuart Henrys (SH): Thank you.

BMR: Can you please first of all say your name, your most recent affiliation and position?

SH: Stuart Henrys, and I’m Emeritus scientist – it’s an honorary position at Earth Science New Zealand. Earth Science New Zealand is only a recent creation of two separate crown research institutes, formerly NIWA and GNS Science, and they combine – actually, similar to JAMSTEC – where earth sciences and oceanographic and climate sciences combined into one institute [note: it is a bit more complicated in comparison to Japan where, ESNZ has and will have components that are also similar to NIED, JMA, and GSI].

BMR: And what has been, in one sentence, your relationship to scientific ocean drilling during your career?

SH: Keeping it short, I was the founding chair of GeoDiscovery New Zealand. That’s the New Zealand organization that participates in scientific drilling in the ocean and scientific drilling on land – IODP and ICDP – and, as an entity, we are joined with Australia as the Australia and New Zealand International Scientific Drilling Consortium (ANZIC) – one membership of IODP – .

BMR: We will talk later about this, in more detail. Now that we have kind of situated you, I will start chronologically. Where are you from and where did you grow up? How was your childhood like?

SH: I’m from New Zealand. I grew up in Auckland, born in Auckland – quite a few years ago – and went to school in Auckland; university there, then went overseas, and then came back to New Zealand.

BMR: What kind of childhood did you have? Just to picture you.

SH: We lived in suburban Auckland. I did the usual things that boys do, school and play. I also helped with my father on his yacht, a little yacht, and we sailed in the Auckland Harbor. Auckland it’s a city that’s centered around in harbor. It’s the scene of a lot of yacht racing; a lot of ships come and go. It’s a big playground for marine and nautical things. And even now, New Zealand is quite famous – it produces worldclass yachtsmen that sail all over the place. So, it was it was good.

We went on lots of camping holidays as kids all over New Zealand, mostly; up and down the country, staying on farms. So, I got to see a lot of the countryside and experience the land. And it kind of drew me into geology, to take it at university. I really enjoyed that. Actually, I started university wanting to be a chemist, an organic chemist, and a few labs in, I realized that wasn’t going to work out too good. I quite like the outdoors too much. And so, I just shifted degrees and it took me actually a little bit longer, because I had some courses I need to make up along the way, because I didn’t take geology initially – enough geology courses. So, that was good. I caught up, and then I completed a degree: Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, and PhD, all at Auckland University – because it was fun, so I didn’t go anywhere else. It was good.

BMR: Was there anyone influential at that point in your education, someone who kind of steer you into certain research topics or that inspire you in the earth science field?

SH: Yeah. I had a really good teacher in my courses for Geophysics, Manfred Hochstein.  He was a German immigrant to New Zealand. He first came to New Zealand as part of the United States Antarctic Research Program (USARP) as a glaciologist to work in Antarctica over three field seasons (1961-2, 1962-3, and 1963-4). The USARP conducted several geophysical traverses during these field seasons extending science that was started during the International Polar Year (IPY1957-8). Anyway, Manfred ended up in New Zealand. He worked for the Department of scientific and Industrial Research from approximately 1965 till 1973 when he shifted to Auckland University and he was my Professor at Auckland University when I started in 1977. Manfred didn’t give awe inspiring lectures, but he was very dedicated to his students and doing fieldwork and very well organized. We undertook field work up and down the country, and he introduced us to a wide range of geophysical measurements. He was a great mentor, and very knowledgeable about the methods we used, and I learned a lot from him. He was inspiring. He passed away in November this year and I was able to attend his funeral service. His legacy will be remembered as a pioneer in geothermal science in New Zealand and particularly in helping developing countries utilize geothermal energy.

BMR: What did you do after your PhD? How did you choose your research pathway?

SH: My PhD was in a geothermal field, Ohaaki-Broadlands, not far from Auckland, and it’s still producing electricity. It was good to do that. I finished that degree in 1987, and the field was just being developed. It’s now part of the network of geothermal power plants near Auckland, in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. I finished that degree, and then I taught for a few years as an assistant lecturer at Auckland University, at the Geothermal Institute – which was founded and directed by Manfred.

Then, I applied and got accepted for a Research Assistant position at Rice University in Houston. I had visited Rice University in Houston during my PhD – I had a one-year Fullbright scholarship to go to the United States, and my wife and I went to Houston in 1986. And then, I returned in 1989 filling a Research Assistant position. We were there for three years. That was a good experience. It was quite different from the kind of research landscape in New Zealand and quite different than the universities in New Zealand. I learned that success depended on gaining research funding, but there’s obviously more resources, and infrastructure, and lots happening.

In the department, I was assisting with computer operations and doing and planning fieldwork to take place in Alaska. But also, I helped several of the younger graduates and PhD students of Professor John Anderson. John was a, sedimentologist  and geophysicist at Rice. He had funding to support a small boat, with which he would go from Galveston out into the Bay, venture not very far out from shore, and collect seismic data over a two-to-three-day voyage. I’d go down and help those guys in the weekend. That was my introduction to shallow geophysics, and how seismic methods could apply to modern sedimentary environments. It was a fruitful partnership, because John and his students operated geoscience projects across two hemispheres, where they’d go to Antarctica during the austral summer, their winter, and do marine voyages in Antarctic waters. And then, during the northern hemisphere summer, they would go out into Galveston Bay. So, it was a kind of link to Antarctica, and he and his students had been backwards and forwards to New Zealand a lot. We could, you know, talk about visiting places in New Zealand. It was fun.

When I applied for a postdoc position, in 1991, that was advertised at Victoria University in Wellington for work in Antarctica, while I didn’t have all of the required skills needed for that particular position, I applied anyway because I had established the link with John Anderson, and because I’m a New Zealander it was easier, I guess, for Victoria to hire a New Zealander back than it was to go through all the immigration bureaucracy to get a foreign national. Peter Barrett was very honest with me later. He said I wasn’t the prime candidate for that position; another person was. But I was very grateful to come back to New Zealand. As a family we were ready to come back. Estelle, my partner, and I had two small children which were born in New Zealand before we left for the US, and they were very young. They would have been starting school in Houston about the time we left, in 1992. So, we decided that it was probably better for us to be back in New Zealand with the family support and everything. So, we did that and came back to Wellington.

I spent two years at Victoria University working on an Antarctic project. Marine seismic data had previously been collected in the Ross Sea and McMurdo Sound and my job was to interpret it with future drilling in mind. Now, these weren’t IODP proposals, although Peter Barrett himself had been on an early DSDP expedition to the Ross Sea. He knew that getting New Zealand, to get ODP or IODP, back then was a huge challenge. The international membership fees were significant, and New Zealand simply couldn’t afford them at the time. So, Peter, came up with a clever workaround: build local capability. He partnered with engineering drilling companies to design and operate a drilling platform on the sea ice. Antarctica has an ice shelf, and the sea ice that floats out from it can accumulate over decades. That ice can serve as a stable drilling platform. So, it’s a kind of shortcut; not exactly a poor person’s drilling platform, but you avoid mobilizing a ship, which is a big deal in Antarctic waters with all the icebergs and logistical headaches.. From the sea ice, you could drill through the ice into the ocean, then into the land, and into the subsurface below.  Pretty amazing. And Peter made it happen..

My role was to turn seismic data into solid drilling proposals using ice-platform rigs and that’s what we did. Peter Barrett led a multi-country consortium and launched two major projects: one in the late 1990s and another in the mid-2000s. The first was the Cape Roberts Project, which ran from 1997 to 1999. I was mainly involved in the 1997–1998 phase, where we drilled three holes and recovered about 1,500 m of sediment. I worked with German colleagues to integrate downhole measurements with our seismic interpretations.

One of the biggest surprises was the age of the sediments. Our seismic models suggested the Victoria Land Basin was a rifted margin next to the Transantarctic Mountains, filled with Cenozoic and Mesozoic strata and maybe even older. Instead, we found relatively young Cenozoic rocks, with the oldest around 34 Ma, sitting above a major basement unconformity. Beneath that, we drilled into Devonian rocks – the same type that outcrop in the Transantarctic Mountains. Hitting that basement was a game-changer: it gave us crucial insights into the tectonic history and the nature of the pre-glacial bedrock that underlies younger sediments, helping us understand how and when the Transantarctic Mountains were uplifted.

Building on the success of Cape Roberts and the seismic interpretation work we had done; we proposed a new drilling campaign – ANDRILL. I was involved in collecting seismic data for that project, which took place about a decade later. The first major hole, AND-1B, was drilled in late 2006 from a platform on the ice-shelf in McMurdo Sound. This campaign was another milestone. It recovered more than 1,200 meters of sediment, providing an extraordinary record of Antarctic climate history over the past 13 million years. The cores revealed multiple cycles of ice sheet advance and retreat, showing that the Antarctic ice sheet is far more dynamic than previously thought. These results were critical for understanding how Antarctica responds to changes in global climate and helped refine models of future ice sheet behaviour.

You can see that the timeframe for getting these proposals mature and galvanizing the international community, building resources and expertise, and putting the management, operations, and engineering in place measured in decades. That’s fine, but when you compare it to the way that IODP and the international global community had operated with the JOIDES Resolution, the difference is striking. The JR was drilling five to six expeditions a year, moving the ship to new locations and circling the planet. So, instead of waiting ten years for another drilling effort, they were achieving multiple drillings every year. That was much more appealing.

I realized that for New Zealand to break out of this cycle we needed to become members of the IODP. It was a good vision, but It took quite a long time to convince the funding agencies and our colleagues in Australia that we would be reliable partners, consistent with our financial commitments, and be able to contribute meaningful to the community. That process that took another decade, but once we had achieved membership, we were in and then on it was a pretty good story.

Meanwhile, I moved my research focus from Antarctica back to New Zealand. The reason was simple: while Antarctica funding is decent, it tends to favor climate earth scientists working on material recovered from drilling expeditions. Geophysics wasn’t seen as critical, and my funding was drying up. So, I had to pivot, and naturally, a big push in New Zealand was toward geohazard-related science

New Zealand sits astride the Australian-Pacific plate boundary, which makes it a close analog to Japan. We have volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis – and share similar hazards. The difference is population: Japan has tens of millions of people, while New Zealand has about five million.  But the risk and exposure, are comparable. A major earthquake knocking out a large city in New Zealand or coastal communities would be just as devastating for us financially, materially, and in infrastructure, as the Tohoku earthquake was in Japan in 2011. Fortunately, we have not experienced an event of that magnitude in living memory, but history, and paleoseismic records show frequent large earthquakes. That makes understanding the subduction process nationally important and has been a research focus of mine ever since.

I shifted my research to subduction zones. Wellington sits on the Hikurangi subduction zone,  where the Pacific plate is diving beneath the Australian plate. The plate at Hikurangi is very similar to the Nankai Trough where the Philippine Sea plate subducts under the Eurasian plate. One of the great things about working on subduction zone processes is the global community, which is collaborative and supportive. I have built strong connections with colleagues at JAMSTEC, and I visit frequently. They’ve been instrumental in supporting New Zealand’s IODP journey and continue to be great partners today.

Together with the international community, I undertook , four significant projects along the Hikurangi margin to develop our understanding of the subduction hazard. Each one of those was nearly a decade apart because they require enormous effort to organize. The experience we gained from joining IODP was invaluable for building these collaborations. We brought research ships from United States, deployed instruments from Japan, expanded our own instrument pool, and collected a huge amount of data. Every project taught us something new and strengthened our ability to assess and mitigate subduction-related risks.

The reason this became important is that it was clear we needed to play a bigger role in IODP if we wanted to see real benefits from our membership. One way to do that was by putting forward our own proposals. In 2011, we developed the idea of a drilling expedition to the Hikurangi Margin—our own subduction plate boundary. We focused on a piece of science that was just emerging in the community: slow slip. These are not the fast, sudden earthquakes people feel, but they still move the plate boundary by millimeters or centimeters over days or weeks. You don’t feel them, but the amount of slip is equivalent to a magnitude seven or eight earthquake.

Why does that matter? Because slow slip was a newly recognized phenomenon, and the big question was whether these events could trigger larger earthquakes. Were they precursors to larger earthquakes? This was the kind of question that we and the international community wanted to know. If we could detect slow slip using geodesy –GPS instruments onshore – then a sudden slip over days or weeks might serve as a forecasting tool, giving scientists and the public an early warning of a potential large earthquake. We still don’t have a complete answer, but to understand the physics behind slow slip, we put forward a drilling proposal for the Hikurangi margin, to tackle that challenge.

Other scientists around the world had also started to detect slow slip on their plate boundaries – in Japan, in Cascadia, Alaska, in Chile and elsewhere. Everyone was asking the same question: what are these events, and what do they mean? That’s when  we put together a proposal. One of the great advantages of the Hikurangi margin is that its slow slip events occur at very shallow depths. This meant that if we could drill directly into the plate boundary, we could sample the zone where slow slip was happening. . It was an ambitious and exciting objective.

We submitted three proposals under an umbrella science plan. The first outlined the overall mission, and then two more focused on drilling: one using the Japanese vessel Chikyu to reach the plate interface, and another using the JOIDES Resolution to drill into shallow regions and the incoming plate sequence. The Chikyu expedition was unlikely because of cost, but we did succeed with the JOIDES Resolution drilling.

The really exciting part in 2011 was realizing that if we could bring the JOIDES Resolution to the South Pacific, we could also tackle other big questions in our region, including Australia. So, we developed a strategy in 2012 – 2013: submit the Hikurangi proposal and, at the same time, mature five or six additional proposals to make full use of the ship while it was in our region.  As  Chair of GeoDiscoveryNZ, I worked hard to get people on board – though it didn’t take much convincing. Rob McKay, at Victoria University, was already sold on IODP after his experience on the Wilkes Land leg to Antarctica. He later led the 2018 Ross Sea expedition. Rupert Sutherland, at GNS Science and Victoria University, teamed up with U.S. colleagues to study subduction initiation in the Tasman Sea, which was drilled in 2017.  Cornell de Ronde, at GNS Science, proposed drilling into Brothers Volcano in the Kermadec Arc to study submarine volcanism and its role in mineral formation and early life—another successful expedition.  And our climate science colleagues revived a Paleogene target in southern New Zealand, which also got drilled. In the end, it was an incredibly successful effort that brought world-class science to our region.

Between 2017 and 2018, we had five expeditions, and for all practical purposes, the JOIDES Resolution was dedicated to New Zealand and Australia for an entire year. There was even another leg off the western coast of Australia that I wasn’t directly involved in, but it happened as part of the effort to bring the ship to the South Pacific. That was a huge win. I’m still dining out on the results from those days, even though the golden era is over. The strategy of building multiple legs around a platform visit is still very much top-of-mind for the Co-Chairs of GeoDiscoveryNZ  who have succeeded me.

I stepped down as Chair of GeoDiscoveryNZ in April this year, and have established a Co-Chair leadership model for the new team. Those roles are now filled, and since April I’ve taken a kind of a back seat. I haven’t left the vehicle, but I still look over their shoulder, but no longer in the driver’s seat.

BMR: Actually, I’d like to ask you about some points, starting from your early career years. Going back to your time at Rice University in the US, you started studying offshore, right? So, you moved from geothermal studies to seismic research offshore and then, when you came to New Zealand, you moved to Antarctic research and these drilling projects. What did you have to learn, in order to move through all these different research subjects?

SH: Between completing a Master’s degree and starting the PhD at Auckland – this a long time ago – I worked for nearly a year as an intern at a geophysical company in Wellington that specialized in seismic processing.. That’s where I learned how to process seismic data. Today, you can push a button and AI assistants do most of the work, but back then it was much more labor-intensive.. That was a skill of collecting and analyzing seismic data turned out to be key for my career..

When I started working in marine geophysics with John Anderson in Texas, the seismic acquisition was extremely primitive. We had a streamer out the back, basically like a set of headphones in the water, and we’d fire an energy source and recording the signal trace on coated paper using an electric arc that generated a distinctive smell. Over the three years I was at Rice, we moved from that paper-based system to recording digitally on cassette tapes. That was a huge leap forward. It allowed John, his students, and me to process the data digitally, similar to what the oil industry was doing at the time. Suddenly, we could replot the data at different scales and analyze it properly. It was a big step up and an exciting time..

I learned a lot about interpreting the data. I already knew how to collect and process the data, but understanding what the images were telling us is what I learned from John and his students. Those interpretation skills turned out to be more important than the processing itself, and I carried them back to Wellington and Victoria University. Peter Barrett was focused on recovering a record of past climate change close to the Antarctic continent, because he believed that the sediments along the continental shelfof Antarctica would capture the history of icesheet migration including advances and retreats over time. Each of those cycles would be preserved as sediment packages on and beyond the shelf and those were the targets for drilling. They still are today. The key is identifying periods of rapid change, whether in sea level rise or fall, icesheet retreat or expansion, and finding stratigraphic intervals where both timing and depositional rates are recorded. Those become prime targets for drilling programs. That means looking at the seismic data and interpreting it in terms of these processes.

I had to learn that, and there weren’t many people doing this research. We were a small group, and still are, working to analyze and interpret that data. It was a great experience. The Antarctic research community is international, like all science, and I built strong collaborations and friendships with colleagues in Germany and the United States. I learned a lot from previous drilling in the Antarctic Peninsula, which is more accessible than the Ross Sea because it’s farther north and closer to South America. That allowed longer drilling seasons, so they managed one or two legs every few years and built-up experience in interpretation. I applied those lessons to the Ross Sea, which is much more challenging. There’s more ice, so we had to be clever in finding drilling targets that were achievable with the technology and would still answer the key scientific questions. That meant collecting and analyzing a lot more data before drilling than in other parts of the Antarctica margin. It took time, but Rob McKay’s success on IODP Expedition 374 in 2018 was a great outcome. I’ve stepped back from that Antarctic research now, though I’m still interested. It was a steep learning curve, and I published quite a lot and there’s still plenty unpublished, maybe something for retirement..

BMR: This is probably more of an overarching question, but how the international collaboration in IODP is similar or different to other kinds of collaborations you’ve been involved in? For example, in ANDRILL or the Cape Roberts Project.

SH: The projects that you mentioned, Cape Roberts Drilling and ANDRILL, were much more similar to ICDP – the International Continental Scientific Drilling Program – projects. Unlike IODP, ICDP and our Antarctic projects don’t have a dedicated drilling asset like the JOIDES Resolution. That’s why membership fees for ICDP are much lower than for IODP, which has to cover the cost of operating an expensive ship and its associated infrastructure..

The trade-off is that while ICDP membership costs less, you have to raise the funds to carry out drilling in Antarctica. It’s cheaper overall, but you don’t have the same organizational power to simply open a project and execute it. Instead, you need to convince multiple countries and partners, align funding cycles so that the money is available in the same year, and then fund the scientists who participate. It’s a much trickier operation. We managed to make it work, though I wasn’t directly involved in the detailed logistics and just saw the value and the synergy with IODP. In New Zealand we never really distinguished the community that is ICDP or the ocean drilling communities because we’re small. We always thought of it as scientific drilling, and we built up the capability to drill on ice as part of our intellectual contribution to the global community. We still do that today.

Those on-ice campaigns took decades to organize, but they were cheaper and just as focused in terms of meeting objectives. There were never as easy as sailing a drillship into the Ross Sea, though logistically more challenging.

BMR: I see. And how came for you the realization that it would be good to get integrated into IODP? Another question related to this is, what was the situation of New Zealand in IODP or ODP before really getting into it as a member?

SH: Peter Barrett sailed on DSDP Leg 28 to the Ross Sea during 1972–1973 aboard the drilling vessel Glomar Challenger. The JOIDES Resolution came to New Zealand in 1998 for Leg 181 (Southwest Pacific Gateways) and returned in 2009–2010 for IODP Expedition 317 (Canterbury Basin Sea Level). During that expedition, nine holes were drilled across four sites on the Canterbury continental margin. New Zealand scientists participated in these campaigns, but we didn’t officially join IODP until 2012.

New Zealand has always been an attractive target for IODP and before that, ODP and DSDP, because it is politically stable, sits astride a major plate boundary, and is close to the Southern Ocean. Significant ocean currents pass through our region, and there are many climate and hazard-related science questions that can be addressed here. Fortunately, IODP has always recognized the value of coming to New Zealand. Our ports are accessible, the drillship can refuel and resupply easily, and scientists can fly in on direct flights. There are no conflicts, and we have world-class science opportunities in our waters. It’s a great place to work and we are easy to work with.

There were quite a few legs and expeditions in New Zealand waters before 2012, but we had never really paid our way or capitalized on all the research that had been accomplished. Eventually, we realized, together with Australia, that it was time to play a bigger role. We saw the value in not just participating in expeditions but leading them. That was the strategy that I and my colleague Chris Hollis outlined in 2011. We knew the JOIDES Resolution was spending time in the Pacific Ocean, and our goal was not only to bring the ship south to the Southern Ocean but to lead the science when it did. That’s exactly what we set out to do. We identified key science questions, galvanized the international community to see the importance of addressing these questions in New Zealand waters, and then competed against other countries for proposals. It was high-stakes science diplomacy.

It wasn’t guaranteed that we could pull the ship and its resources to New Zealand in the face of strong competition. The drillship was operated by NSF but governed by the JR Facility Board, which met annually to decide where the ship would go for the next one to three years. They would signal, for example, that the Pacific was on the horizon, and that gave us the chance to submit proposals and steer the ship toward our region. That was the call to arms for us: to bring the JOIDES Resolution to the South Pacific.

BMR: You mentioned at some point that you were involved in the establishment of GeoDiscovery New Zealand and through that, New Zealand became part of ANZIC. What were the main challenges of those initial years of getting New Zealand started in IODP?

SH: It’s a long story and a tough one. Chris Hollis (also now retired) and I convinced one of the government departments, then called the Ministry of Economic Development (MED), of the potential value of IODP membership. MED was responsible for licensing and regulating petroleum block offers in New Zealand waters. This was back in 2010. At the time, they could see the value of knowledge gained from the Canterbury Basin leg and recognized that scientific drilling could provide information useful to petroleum companies. So, they contributed to a year’s membership in 2012 through Australia. Australia welcomed that support and then asked us if we would continue funding.

We wanted to keep going, so Chris and I approached the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE), which had absorbed MED and was responsible for science funding. In those days, there was no specific call for proposals, but we made a case for membership funding—and it was turned down. The problem was that our funding system had no mechanism for supporting international infrastructure where money goes to a global organization. Infrastructure funding traditionally paid for instruments and equipment—something you could put a plaque on. They couldn’t see another model. The idea of being part of an international community that moves a drillship around the planet was hard for them to grasp. They didn’t see the value, and maybe we didn’t make a strong enough case. Their response was, “If the earth science community really wants this, you’ll have to pay for it yourselves.”

So, Chris and I convinced the universities to contribute a little money and persuaded GNS Science, the Crown Research Institute, and our own employers to add funds. Initially, two universities – Victoria and Otago – joined, along with two CRIs, NIWA and GNS Science. Auckland University came on board later. It was a struggle. There are seven universities in New Zealand, and frankly, only two supported it well at the time. GNS Science covered the bulk of the membership cost. That was when we established the ANZIC agreement between GNS Science and the Australian National University, along with DRILLNZ, the forerunner to GeoDiscoveryNZ.

It was tough because, in New Zealand, most science funding goes to pay people, not to pay for membership in an international organization where the return isn’t guaranteed. It was a year-by-year battle. One year, we couldn’t pay our share, and Australia generously allowed us to remain part of ANZIC until we bridged the gap.

Finally, in 2021, we went back to MBIE with a much stronger value proposition. I had done a lot of homework and convinced MBIE’s Chief Science Advisor to support us. There was a lot of politics involved, but the timing was good. By then, we had successfully completed five scientific drilling expeditions in New Zealand and the Southern Ocean, and the government could see real value for its investment. That support has continued to this day. We’ve now benefited from membership for over a decade. It took nine years to convince the government, but once we did, it’s been a great success.

BMR: Yeah, I see that you know you put a lot of your time and effort in getting New Zealand into IODP and continuing collaboration. How do you evaluate the success, the achievements, or the things that are still to be done, now that you kind of step a little bit back?

SH: For the longest time, funding was very limited. It came out of the GNS Science research program that I managed, and it was used solely for IODP membership. In Australia, the model was very different—and similar to what most IODP member countries do. Alongside membership fees, they also allocate money to support scientists and students. They fund postdocs to attend workshops or summer schools, run their own proposal development workshops, and support travel for collaboration. These activities aren’t directly tied to drilling expeditions but are essential for building community, knowledge, and expertise. We couldn’t do any of that. Until the Ministry began paying for membership, we had no resources for these activities.

Once the Ministry covered membership, we could redirect our previous contributions toward community-building. That meant funding proposal workshops, bringing international researchers to New Zealand, and supporting outreach. The last activity I helped organize was an ANZIC Distinguished Lecture circuit across Australia and New Zealand. We also support the annual ANZIC Masterclass—a one-week program for top undergraduate and graduate students from New Zealand and Australia to learn marine science skills related to ocean drilling. The host institution alternates between Australia and New Zealand.

All of this is easier to justify now because we’re investing in the next generation. We fund researchers to write proposals and continue working on legacy core material largely recovered during the 2017–2018 expeditions, showing the scientific outcomes and societal impact. We still have instruments in IODP boreholes off the Hikurangi margin, deployed in 2017, recording downhole temperature and pressure. Our scientists participate in expeditions, and we support new proposals. For example, we funded a scientist on Expedition 400 to the NW Greenland Glaciated Margin in 2023 and others are  attending the IODP3 Magellan workshop in Taiwan next week to develop a new Hikurangi margin proposal. We’ve supported graduate students at ECORD summer schools and document all these activities annually. Over time, there’s been a marked increase in placing scientists on expeditions, supporting their research, and ensuring the next generation of Earth scientists is skilled and excited to participate.

BMR: Actually, it’s interesting to see that initially funding was much more focused on expeditions, and then the effort was directed in widening support for all the other activities related to scientific ocean drilling that are equally essential. Because it could be understood that IODP is only about expeditions, but it’s actually supported by much more activities that happen in between expeditions.

SH: We always knew that co-funding was essential, and we had to find creative ways to encourage it. Our success came from demonstrating that we were part of a global scientific community, which made it easier to justify contributing to internationally relevant research. University departments could then apply for small grants to support postdocs and early-career researchers for travel and workshop participation. Being part of a larger enterprise like IODP and ICDP strengthened their case for funding.

Now, GeoDiscoveryNZ has resources to offer small grants directly to scientists at member institutions, helping them avoid some of the institutional bureaucracy. We are also actively encouraging other New Zealand universities to join GeoDiscoveryNZ and contribute to the co-funding pool, so we can continue building capacity and supporting collaborative science.

BMR: At some point you mentioned, after talking about this strategy of putting together different proposals, that the “golden days” are over (both laugh). What did you mean by that? That it’d be difficult to replicate the scheme?

SH: The JOIDES Resolution was aging, and everyone knew it. Despite its limitations, it remained a globally capable vessel for riserless drilling. However, it couldn’t operate easily in Antarctica, drill in ultra-deep water, or penetrate very hard rock, but within those constraints, it achieved an enormous amount. For fifty years, proposals were designed around what the JR could do, and those were the easy targets.

Now, without that ship, we must think differently. Expeditions are more expensive, but the IODP³ system is potentially more agile. Under IODP, we already had Mission-Specific Platforms (MSP) – tailored expeditions using alternative assets for environments where the JOIDES Resolution couldn’t access, such as coral reefs, shallow water, or the Arctic Ocean. The MSP world is where we are now. The challenge is to design expeditions around other drilling platforms that can still deliver high-value science, perhaps drilling two or three legs in one campaign.

Future expeditions won’t involve a drillship recovering a thousand meters of soft sediment. Instead, they might use an engineering rig capable of drilling tens or hundreds of meters or multiple shallow targets to answer specific questions. Are there drilling targets in Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica that could be packaged together so one vessel could tackle several objectives? That would save money for IODP³ compared to sending separate expeditions to the South Pacific, the Atlantic, and elsewhere. These are the ideas we’re exploring now. We’re not there yet, but we’re actively thinking about new ways of working.

BMR: In your experience, how has the scientific community of ocean drilling in New Zealand evolved over these past 20 years?

SH: Back in the 1970s and 80s, New Zealand scientists tended to be quite parochial. University departments focused on local research problems. For example, in Auckland, the geology is dominated by Miocene sandstones and mudstones, which are prone to slipping, creating landslide risks for housing. Auckland University researchers were not thinking globally about science questions. They were constrained by funding and resources. Today, however, many communities face complex natural hazards that extend beyond local councils and become nationally significant. Over time, universities have lifted their vision: act locally but think globally. For today’s students to secure jobs and remain relevant, they need international connections. Making that transition has taken time.

The community has become more global, but in the past 12 months, financial pressures have increased worldwide, and big science projects face greater scrutiny. New Zealand’s science budget has been cut, so we’re fortunate to still be involved in land and ocean scientific drilling. The challenge now is how to sustain momentum after a golden era for science. It’s not easy.

In New Zealand, we’ve worked hard to convince government of the value and purpose of international membership. The key question is always: “What is the cost-benefit of being part of this global science effort?” Membership of IODP³ and ICDP remains a significant cost, and I’ve warned my successors that they will need a strong answer to that question. It’s not unique to us and many countries are asking the same thing. Recently, I helped write an Achievement Report summarizing the last decade of IODP, which has now ended as we enter the new IODP3 phase.

The report is intended to be readable by an intelligent 12-year-old and highlights the top ten achievements of the past decade. Each achievement has a two-page summary, and I contributed to two chapters and advised on a third. Distilling a decade of science into language the public can understand – and see value in – is a real challenge. The process has taken nearly eight months, which is far too long. If you take eight months to produce something, no one pays attention. Even Nobel Prizes only hold the spotlight for a year. We have a very limited window to convince the public that science is worth investing in.

The booklet is finished, but it’s too word-heavy and lacks images. I’ve been pushing hard for photos that include people, not just cores and technology. People need to see themselves in the work, but many colleagues don’t get that. We’ll see how it turns out. It could still end up being page after page of core images.

For New Zealand, the key messages are clear: demonstrate cost-benefit and communicate science globally. Once this Achievement Report summary is finalized, we need a one-and-a-half-page version for policymakers. No one is thinking about that yet, but it’s essential especially as we look toward the second half of the UN Decade of Ocean Science.

BMR: Yeah, I agree that the general public must see the connection of science to people, and see that it’s done through people like them. And also, the way to phrase the science, the scientific achievements. Because the wider public nowadays need really clear and impactful message, right? So, if you get into the details, they don’t understand what’s the relationship to their lives. In that sense, I know that climate change and geohazard it’s kind of the easy way to go…

SH: They were the easy chapters to write! I did this subduction zone with Sanny Saito at JAMSTEC, and a colleague in France who was the co-chief on the JTRACK expedition off Japan. Marianne Conin. She is good. But some people just get lost in the detail. They’re good scientists. They’re really good. I mean nothing wrong. Unbelievable. But in this document, we don’t need the weeds. We just need the full grass.

BMR: Yeah, I understand. What do you think has been the most valuable that the participation in IODP has brought to New Zealand?

SH: Global connections are what make Earth sciences so powerful. In New Zealand, for many reasons, it’s a happy playground for geoscience. Our plate boundary is an extraordinary natural laboratory for the world, and that has helped us punch well above our weight. But the real achievement has been becoming leaders in this science. Researchers like Rob McKay, Laura Wallace, Ingo Pecher, Cornel de Ronde, and Rupert Sutherland are internationally recognized names. That reputation attracts talented students – both homegrown and international – to our universities.

The investment in New Zealand has been significant. This is my current bandwagon: hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars have flowed into New Zealand in research funding. That’s a substantial proportion of what our government invests in science in a single year. Extraordinary by any measure. The problem is that this investment doesn’t appear on any government, University, or CRI balance sheet. It’s invisible. Managers and policymakers don’t see it as income, even though it comes into the country and supports research. The challenge now is figuring out how to make that contribution visible and recognized.

BMR: And what has been for you, for your career or personal development, the most important learning, the most important takeaway from your involvement in scientific ocean drilling, or more broadly, in management of international collaborations?

SH: We can’t do this work alone. We do it better together. A small country at the end of the world gets to contribute to global science, and that’s been incredibly rewarding. It’s been fun. After stepping down in April, I spent three and a half months in Europe visiting colleagues in Barcelona, Trieste, Rome, and the UK. Perhaps Japan in 2026—we’ll see.

BMR: I think, for my side that’s, everything I wanted to discuss about, but is there anything you wanted to explain that I have forgot to ask you or we didn’t get into that topic?

SH: No, I can’t think of anything right now. Thank you for the interview and the opportunity to tell my story.

BMR: Thank you so much.