Tales from the Deep: Story Corps Interview with Elizabeth Sibert

Scientific Ocean Drilling – the technology that has allowed us to sample deep into the sea floor going back in time tens of millions of years, is an essential tool in the PaleoFISHES lab. We rely on Scientific Ocean Drilling samples collected by the international research community over the past 5 decades to do our work.

Dr. Laura Guertin, a professor at Penn State Brandywine, science communicator, and exceptional quilter, has been collecting and sharing stories from people involved with Scientific Ocean Drilling and compiling them in an exceptional StoryCorps archive. I was honored to be somewhere around episode #50, and it was a pleasure to sit down with Laura and chat about all of the amazing things that Scientific Ocean Drilling does, and has done for our research community, and how we can continue to pay back into this incredible resource to ensure that future generations have the opportunity to continue learning about the history of our planet.

Check out the interview here, and have a listen to some of the others while you’re there – the stories are incredibly diverse, delightful, and really capture some of the unique ways scientific ocean drilling – and being on a research vessel – can shape a person!

Finally, Laura was kind enough to send me an absolutely beautiful “thank you” quilt after the interview. I look forward to hanging this on my office wall, and appreciating the long history of the JOIDES Resolution – the drill ship that made this all possible – as we move towards the future of research.

JOIDES Resolution Quilt by Laura Guertin and a Tales from the Deep Postcard.