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Entrance to Suku Cave, in the heart of Small Ngella Island,Solomon Islands.An unexpected glorius deep blue pool hints that this cleftcaveopens somewhere in the ocean (Russell Islands group,Solomon Islands).work. It was pretty exciting; everything wasnew and there was a lot of groundbreakingwork being done.“In the last five to ten years it has reallytaken off, partly because technologyand concepts have been proven, butincreasingly it’s fuelled by the growingawareness of global warming and the needto quantify short-term variability in theclimate system.”Deep sea coral research is more recent.“It’s only in the last decade that peoplehave begun to systematically study thebiology, ecology and geochemistry of theseorganisms. Again, this is partly drivenby technological change; exploration ofthe deep oceans is in its infancy, and theubiquity and complexity of deep-coralhabitats is only now being realised.”Sinclair says that the most direct usersof the kind of climate record he hopesto generate are the scientists runningthe combined ocean/atmosphere globalclimate models (GCMs) that provideclimatic forecasts.“So much is still uncertain about thephysics of our climate and ocean systemthat it is very important for these modellersto tune their simulations by running‘hindcasts’. That is, reproducing pastclimate behaviour from proxy records.“This gives them confidence that theirmodels will ‘forecast’ reasonably accuratelyfor some period into the future.”Prior to his current post in Texas, Sinclairheld a postdoctoral research post atGEOTOP, Université du Québec à Montréal(2002-2005), where he worked primarilyon deep sea corals, and was a consultantfor the Australian Nuclear Scienceand Technology Orgnisation (ANSTO),participating in environmental remediationprogrammes for acid mine drainage.Both Sinclair’s parents have an interest inthe natural world; his father is a botanistand biology teacher. Sinclair creditsthem with instilling in him the sense ofcuriosity, fascination for discovery, andenvironmentalism that have driven hisscientific work.“As kids, my brother, sister and I wouldbe taken into the forest to search for rareinsects and endangered species of frog,go on fossil-hunting trips, or to hunt forundiscovered cave systems in the ruggedwest-coast karst landscape.“I love discovering things and thedetective work required to piece togethera geochemical puzzle, and my research hasalso taken me to some amazing places.“But I’m also driven by a strongenvironmental ethos. Like many scientistsI’m alarmed at the possibility of globalwarming, and am critical of a world whereexcess consumption and waste generatesa great many social and environmentalproblems, some of which we have yet tofeel the worst of.“I hope that my research helps tocontribute to an understanding of ourworld, and, more directly, to generatescientific fact that politically-motivatedadministrators can’t ignore.”The success of his present 18-month pilotstudy in Texas, which is showing promisingresults and now has just four monthsleft to run, will determine whether thisresearch continues as a major study.Sinclair, meanwhile, will be seeking apermanent scientific post after somethingof a nomadic existence for the pastseven years. He is currently applying forpositions at New Zealand’s Institute forGeological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS)and the Scottish Alliance for Geoscience,Environment and Society (SAGES).Thick tacky mud — a mixture of river sediment and disease-riddenbat guano — can make fieldwork difficult and dangerous.30 Canterbury Magazine“The faithful four-wheel drive: fieldworker’s friend in the Solomon Islands where you don’t have to go far from Honiarabefore you hit kidney-puréeing conditions that would trash less rugged vehicles.” Dan Sinclair with staff from the SolomonIslands Department of Mines and Geology.