The international Ocean Drilling Program (ODP), successor to the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP) begun in 1968, is a partnership of scientists and governments created to explore the Earth's origin and evolution beneath the seafloor. Aboard the drill ship JOIDES Resolution, researchers from around the world gather samples of sediment and rock from below the ocean floor. (The "JOIDES" part of the ship's name stands for Joint Oceanographic Institutions for Deep Earth Sampling.)

Important discoveries made by the ODP include a new understanding of the causes and history of ice ages, the evolution of the continental margins, Earth's tectonic processes, marine sedimentation, and the origin and evolution of oceanic crust. Investigators involved in the ODP may specialize in sedimentology (the study of matter that settles to the bottom of the sea), paleontology (the study of fossil plants and animals and of the rock formations in which these fossils are found), petrology (the study of the origin, occurrence, structure, and composition of rocks), geochemistry, geophysics, and paleomagnetics.

As one might expect, these discoveries have led to new research questions. Drilling and sampling ocean sediment and crust will remain important to the field of oceanography. ODP officials predict that the program will assist and become more integrated with other earth science programs, such as the international program of mid-ocean Ridge InterDisciplinary Global Experiments (RIDGE), the Ocean Seismic Network, and the work of hydrologists and geochemists worldwide. In years to come, ocean drilling will tell us even more about earthquakes, global change, sea-level rise, climate, and ocean history.