Marine Geology & Geophysics
Antarctic Voyage: Imaging Unseen Earth
The University of Texas took first place honors for this film in the Educational Documentary category of the annual competition for 1992 College Television Awards from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (College Emmy Award). The film also won the "Gold Award" in the Scientific Documentary category at the 26th annual Worldfest Houston, the largest international film festival in the world. Frank Barnas, a MFA graduate student from the University of Texas at Austin, wrote-produced-directed-photographed-edited the 60-minute video, Antarctic Voyage: Imaging Unseen Earth.
The video was filmed during a 45 day research cruise conducted aboard the R/V Maurice Ewing. The cruise was planned to conduct a marine multichannel seismic (MCS) survey, in conjunction with sonobuoy oblique reflection/refraction measurements, gravity, magnetics, and multi-beam bathymetry. The collected data were used to study several globally important crust-forming processes that have been active during the complex tectonic history of the Antarctic Peninsula.
The University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) and Columbia University Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) were jointly awarded funding by the National Science Foundation for the study. Research staff, graduate students and other researchers from both institutions formed the bulk of the scientific crew. Dr. Ian W. Dalziel, Senior Research Scientist at the Institute, was the Principle Investigator for the project along with Senior Research Scientist, James A. Austin, Jr., who also served as the Chief Scientist. Other investigators included Thomas Shipley and Larry Lawver of UTIG and Dennis Hayes and John Mutter of LDGO. Over 2500 km of seismic lines were shot in the area of the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula during the highly successful cruise.
Click here to download the Quicktime movie of the Antarctic Voyage.