Ross Ice Shelf Project: Drilling in and below ice will reveal physical, chemical, biological features

The Ross Ice Shelf Project as presently conceived will involve the drilling of a hole in the Ross Ice Shelf to investigate the shelf ice, the underlying sea water, and the ocean floor.

It is difficult to trace the origin of the idea for this multidisciplinary project to an individual or group of individuals, but ever since the Ross Ice Shelf was penetrated at Little America in 1958 (Ragle et al., 1960), a number of scientists have speculated on the value of future ice-core drilling in the shelf. In 1968, A. P. Crary suggested in his address to the Interna- tional Symposium on Antarctic Glaciological Exploration that a number of scientific problems could be solved if a hole drilled several hundred kilometers back of the Ross Ice Shelf barrier could be used to sample the underlying water column and bottom sediments (Crary, 1970).