The Section holds a one-day Seminar, annually, on a Saturday in March




Saturday Seminar, 9th March 2019


The venue will be on the Leicester University campus.

The theme for 2019 is to be - Geology under the Sea

The programme will include:

  • The history of deep sea exploration
  • What we can learn about the history of the Earth from microfossils and sediments
  • The study of geological events at sea
  • The practical and economic uses of the information gained


British Antarctic Survey Ship
The history of deep sea exploration by vessels goes back to about the mid-seventies. The British RRS John Brisco was extensively re-fitted for study of physical oceanography, in response to the growing demand for deep sea research. It was replaced in 1991 by the vessel pictured here in a NERC photograph - the RSS James Clark Ross. This was the first British Antarctic Survey (BAS) vessel to be purpose-built as a science platform. Projects such as mapping and collecting cores of the sediments around Antarctica, in association with the JOIDES Resolution drill ship, provide information to enable prediction of changes in the ice sheets surrounding Antarctica. Similar investigations of the geological record, on continental margins in the northern hemisphere, have given insight into the controls determining ice sheet retreat.
Many commercial vessels are equipped with drill rigs; both in the energy sector, and in geological research. The already mentioned JOIDES Resolution (Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling) is used in the International Ocean Discovery Program and has drilled into many seamounts and ocean trenches - usually bringing up basalt of oceanic crust.
Liftboat Myrtle, on expedition 364 of the IODP, brought up limestone, granite and breccia!
The continental crust of Chicxulub.

NOAA facility
The study of geologic events on the sea bed, which range from effusive outpourings of basalt at mid-ocean ridges, through eruptions of seafloor volcanoes, to earthquakes at subduction zones, or slumping of sediments, in turbidite flows down scarp slopes, enable mitigation responses in the event of resultant tsunami, or volcanic fallout or pumice rafting.
The use of ROV, remotely operated vehicles, or manned submersibles enables us to understand, from visualisation, how economic mineral deposits are formed.
Stacks Image 13
The discovery of hot water circulation through the ocean floor, revealed previously unknown biomes; and also the creation of rich mineral deposits - mostly sulphides (British spell-checker at work!), and insight into the deposition regimes of some, now terrestrial, ores. The debate continues on the mining of the ocean floor. Whereas some licences have been granted, opinion is varied on the advisability of taking minerals from the deep. Of concern, to some, is the spectre of pollution that may be caused….