Completing the Coral Leg
Overall the second leg of the expedition was successful for both the science and R/V Falkor operations teams. The primary mission for this leg focused on...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Final collections
The research operations ended today with two final dives of ROV Global Explorer MK3. The objective was to collect live specimens of three different coral...
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Schmidt Ocean Institute/Deep Sea Systems International, Inc.
Completing Coral Imaging
Today R/V Falkor and ROV Global Explorer MK3 made a second and final visit to a site near the Macondo wellhead. Dr. Chuck Fisher and...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Data, More Data
It may be another six months to a year until researchers come back to these study sites. All of the physical samples, digital images, video,...
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Schmidt Ocean Institute/Deep Sea Systems International, Inc.
Hydroids on Corals
Clusters of feathery hydroids cling to many of the coral colonies that Dr. Chuck Fisher and his team have been studying during the latest scientific...
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Deep Sea Systems International / Schmidt Ocean Institute
Deep-sea Surprises
Just when the seafloor scene becomes repetitive, something unexpected will come into view, reminding you of the mysteries of the deep. The surprise today came...
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Douglas Smith, Deep Sea Systems International, Inc.
Monitoring Corals Impacted by Oil
R/V Falkor operations today focused on a community of deep-water corals located 11 kilometers southwest of the Macondo wellhead where Deepwater Horizon disaster occurred in...
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Deep Sea Systems International / Schmidt Ocean Institute
Collecting Corals
Today’s ROV dive focused on collecting live specimens of two deep-sea coral species for onboard laboratory experiments. Graduate students Dannise Ruiz and Danielle Young will...
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Leighton Rolley
Leg 2 Underway
This morning, R/V Falkor left Pascagoula heading offshore toward a study site about 140 kilometers southeast. Following the ship familiarization, the arriving group of scientists...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Completing the Lander Leg
R/V Falkor docked in Pascagoula at sunup Monday morning. The lander leg team offloaded the two giant landers with their carefully labeled data loggers. They...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
OC26 Lander Recovered
Second benthic lander was recovered today using ROV Global Explorer MK3 from R/VFalkor. This lander was taking measurements and collecting water samples since April 2012...
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Schmidt Ocean Institute/Deep Sea Systems International, Inc.
Deeper Corals
R/V Falkor arrived at the target deep sea coral study site early this morning and the research team prepared for the ROV dive. The video...
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Deep Sea Systems International / Schmidt Ocean Institute
Percolating Seeps
Today, the research team completed the final planned ROV dives planned at the natural oil seep site designated as GC600. ROV Global Explorer MK3 collected...
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Danielle Young
Landing the Lander
Today was an incredibly successful day. Falkor the Luck Dragon—the ship’s namesake—seemed to be with us all along the way. The first order of business...
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Deep Sea Systems / Schmidt Ocean Institute
Diving on the Megaplume
We woke to sunny skies this morning and the anticipation of diving the ROV Global Explorer MK3 at the "Megaplume" natural oil seep site. The...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Deep-Sea Corals Under Stress
The weather was too rough for deploying any instruments today. But the science team continued to work on experiments in the lab. Molecular ecologist Dr....
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Planning on the Fly
Today we had both successes and setbacks. Working at sea is often like this. As Ian MacDonald says, “When you do challenging science at sea,...
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Debbie Nail Meyer/Scmidt Ocean Institute/Deep Sea Systems International, Inc.
Mucking in Mud
Oozing samples of seafloor sediments from multicore casts and ROV push cores are brought into the wet lab for processing. The scientists working on these...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Detecting Oil from Sky and Sea
Benthic landers, shipboard mapping, and ROVs give underwater views of the seafloor, but aerial remote sensing platforms provide another vantage point for finding evidence of...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Land(er) Ho
The second ROV dive of the expedition took place today. Its primary objective was servicing a benthic lander that has been collecting measurements on the...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Diving for Deep-Sea Corals
The research team onboard was very excited to begin scientific underwater surveys and sample collections with remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Global Explorer MK3 this morning....
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Equipment Testing and Calibration
Our first night at sea was spent offshore about 140 kilometers (88 nautical miles) south of Pascagoula mapping the seafloor. R/V Falkor has a state-of-the-art multibeam...
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Debbie Nail Meyer
Departing Pascagoula
For the past two days, the science team has been busily unpacking boxes, assembling instruments, and getting oriented on R/VFalkor in preparation for the upcoming cruise....
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