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We present the first results from a survey of SDSS quasars selected forstrong H I damped Lyman-{\alpha} (DLA) absorption with corresponding lowequivalent width absorption from strong low-ion transitions (e.g. C II{\lambda}1334 and Si II {\lambda}1260). These metal-poor DLA candidates wereselected from the SDSS DR5 quasar spectroscopic database, and comprise a largenew sample for probing low metallicity galaxies. Medium-resolution echellettespectra from the Keck ESI spectrograph for an initial sample of 35 systems wereobtained to explore the metal-poor tail of the DLA distribution and toinvestigate the nucleosynthetic patterns at these metallicities. We haveestimated saturation corrections for the moderately under-resolved spectra, andsystems with very narrow Doppler parameter (b \le 5 km s-1) will likely haveunderestimated abundances. For those systems with Doppler parameters b > 5 kms-1, we have measured low metallicity DLA gas with [X/H] < -2.4 for at leastone of C, O, Si, or Fe. Assuming non-saturated components, we estimate thatseveral DLA systems have [X/H] < -2.8, including five DLA systems with both lowequivalent widths and low metallicity in transitions of both C II and O I. Allof the measured DLA metallicities, however, exceed or are consistent with ametallicity of at least 1/1000 of solar, regardless of the effects ofsaturation in our spectra. Our results indicate that the metal-poor tail ofgalaxies at z \sim 3 drops exponentially at [X/H]< -3. The observed ratio of[C/O] for values of [O/H] < -2.5 exceeds values seen in moderate metallicityDLA systems, and also exceeds theoretical nucleosynthesis predictions forhigher mass Population III stars.

Keck ESI Observations of Metal-Poor Damped Lyman-{\alpha} Systems