Scientists and logistics experts from Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States met from September 21 to 23, 1993, near Washington, D.C., to discuss management, logistics, and science objectives of a proposed international stratigraphic drilling project.The project plans to core 1500 m of strata beneath the western Ross Sea off Cape Roberts, where shipboard geophysical surveys indicate that dipping sedimentary strata occur close to the seafloor beneath a thin blanket of much younger sediments (Figure 1). These sediments include the oldest sedimentary sequences in the Ross Sea and are interpreted to be from 30‐ to more than 100‐m.y. old. No rocks of this age are known to crop out in the Ross Sea‐Transantarctic Mountains region or other parts of east Antarctica.