Japan Sets Record for Drilling the Deepest Hole in the Ocean

JAPAN一 On May 14 Japanese research vessel Kaimei broke a 43-year-old record for the deepest water site ever drilled and cored at 8023 meters. The record was previously held by Drilling Vessel Glomar Challenger who set the record for the deepest coring site 7034 meters in the Mariana Trench, according to a May 18 blog post by Professor Michael Strasser. To get to the record, the crew used a 40-meter long Giant Piston Corer. The expedition started at 9:20 a.m. local time and took until 3 p.m., according to the blog post. The crew curated 37.74-meters of sediment core which set another record for the deepest sub-sea level sample taken at 8060.74 meters below sea level. The previous record was 20.5 meters of curated sediment core. The sediment will now be taken in for scientific analysis.  To learn more, see the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling, https://www.ecord.org/offshore-phase-exp386-completed/.