While at Texas A&M University for our postcruise editorial meeting [1] with some old friends from the Bengal Fan expedition, I took the opportunity to visit IODP’s Gulf Core Repository.
[1] Although we spent many hours writing and editing our reports on the ship, we were under a lot of time pressure on the cruise. Fast writing isn’t necessarily good writing. So, typically, a subset of the scientists from a drilling expedition gets together after the expedition to edit the reports. We had the benefit of shorter shifts (not 12 hours! Yay!), good communication with the outside world, fast internet access, and an publications staff including editors and illustrators. Soon after we’re done, we should have a document that looks like this example from a previous expedition. It won’t be published for a year due to the post-cruise moratorium – we get a year’s head start on publications from our work – but you can read a summary here.
The editing session is also a bit of a reunion. It was great seeing friends from the ship again!