The Integrated Ocean Drilling Program (IODP), an international collaboration of Earth, ocean, and life scientists that began in 2003, offers scientists worldwide unprecedented opportunities to address a vast array of scientific problems in all submarine settings. Recently, the scientific advisory structure of the proposal-driven IODP scheduled drilling expeditions, targeting critical scientific problems in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Pacific Ocean, for 2005 and early 2006 (Figure 1, Table 1). The IODP, which is co-led by Japan and the United States, with strong contributions from the European Consortium for Ocean Research Drilling (ECORD) and China, is guided by an initial science plan, Earth, Oceans, and Life (www.iodp.org). For the first time, through the IODP, scientists have at their disposal both a riser (drilling vessel which has a metal tube surrounding the drill pipe that enables the return of drilling fluid and cuttings to the drill ship; the riser is attached to a blow-out preventer or shut-off device at the seafloor) and riserless drilling vessel (which lacks a riser pipe and blow-out preventer), as well as mission-specific capabilities such as drilling barges and jack-up rigs for shallow-water and Arctic drilling.