TTR Programme 10th Anniversary

Training-Through-Research (Floating University) Programme
Celebrates its 10th Anniversary and Looks into the Future

In 2000, the Training through Research (TTR) programme celebrated its 10th anniversary. In the period 1991-2000, ten annual TTR cruises were conducted in the Mediterranean and Black seas, and in the northern Atlantic. Over 500 scientists and students have taken part in the cruises. They hailed from 27 countries: Algeria, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Chile, Denmark, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Morocco, the Netherlands, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, United Kingdom and USA. For the same period, eight post-cruise conferences were held in Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Cardiff (the UK), Gent (Belgium), Granada (Spain), Moscow (Russia) and Southampton (UK).

Students at a ship-board seminar, Training-through-Research Cruise

A number of other field exercises (including smaller cruises and thematic field workshops), group and individual training activities were carried out, all contributing to TTR. Altogether, 73 universities and research institutions have become involved in the TTR field operations. Over ten Ph.D. and D.Sc. dissertations have been defended based on the TTR results, in addition to tens of MSc and BSc projects.

Among the research achievements of the TTR programme are: (i) discovery and detailed study of mud-volcano provinces on the floor of the Black and Mediterranean seas and in the NE Atlantic, and advancement of knowledge about their origin; (ii) advancement of knowledge about the geometry of deep-sea sedimentary depositional systems and their processes of formation on continental margins; (iii) pioneering studies of gas hydrates and gas and fluid flow through the sediments; (iv) studies of giant carbonate mounds and their relation to cold water corals.

TTR provides added value to European programmes, as in the study of impacts on the deep-ocean biosphere, with a view to its preservation, and in studies of bottom environments and ecosystems that are controlled by strong bottom currents. Indeed TTR has helped to trigger some of the latest European programmes. The TTR research results have been reported in some 30 peer-reviewed publications, including two special issues of the Marine Geology (1996) and Geomarine Letters (1998) international journals, as well as in several hundred other types of publications

(UNESCO and IOC reports, abstracts of papers, etc.). Last but not least, is that after ten years of operations, the TTR programme may report that it has reached its primary objective: many young, well-trained specialists continue successfully working in the marine geoscience field — in universities, research institutions, geophysical companies and oil industries.

The 10^th TTR cruise (July-August 2000) on board the Logachev (Russia) was carried out in the North Atlantic, with the participants from Belgium, Brazil, Georgia, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland and the UK: 58 researchers and students took part in three legs of the cruise. Daily seminars, lectures and discussions on the data, that had been collected, facilitated high-level on-the-job training. Among the research objectives of the cruise were studies of the effects of the Mediterranean Undercurrent on the sedimentation patterns, as well as processes of diapirism, mud volcanism, cold seeping and gas venting, deep-water corals, chemosynthetic communities and gas hydrates in the Gulf of Cadiz; deep-sea depositional system- modern analogues of hydrocarbon reservoirs-, carbonate mud mounds and fluid escape features on the Portuguese margin and in the North Atlantic; hydrothermal processes on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. The TTR principles were also realized during the summer 2000 cruises of the Belgica (Belgium) and Pelagia (the Netherlands) to the NE Atlantic.

Two meetings of the TTR Executive Committee (October 2000 and January 2001) summarized the programme results and made planning for the 2001 operations. An IOC-sponsored international conference ‘Geological Processes on Deep-water European Margins’ (Moscow, January 2001) was held, attended by some 80 participants from the cooperating countries. The TTR results were recently presented at various international fora organized by CIESM (Tunisia, November 2000), American Geophysical Union (San Francisco, December 2000), European Geological Union (Strasbourg, April 2001), etc. The results of the 1999 cruise were published in the IOC Technical Series as No.56, in addition to the Floating University Annual Report for 1999.

Plans are in hand to extend TTR operations to western Africa and to South America in 2002.