Megabank found? Flanks record sea level

On Leg 101, the first international voyage for the Ocean Drilling Program, the deep-sea drilling ship JOIOES Resolution (SEDCO/BP 471) left Miami, Fla., on Jan. 31 to investigate the geology of the Bahamas. (Leg 100 tested the Resolution's readiness. See July Geotimes.) Before returning to Miami on March 14, the crew had drilled 19 holes al 11 sites and recovered 46.2% of the cored section (about 1.5 of 3.1 km cored). The scientific party wanted to test conflicting hypotheses about the development of the modern shallow water carbonate banks and intervening deep -water throughs in the Bahamas, and to study the growth patterns of carbonate slopes and their response to sea-level fluctuations. Those objectives (the 'deep ' and the 'shallow') were selected beause recent advances in interpreting the micropaleontology of shallow-water carbonate platforms, coupled with data from previous sedimentological investigations and regional and site-specific seismic surveys, now permit consistent stratigraphic comparisons in the Bahamas