The expanding reach of humankind has plunged far into the unknown, which is also home to the largest ecosystem on the planet. Throughout parts of the seafloor are untapped sources of rare earth metals including gold, silver and copper, and more importantly sulfide, zinc, manganese, and cobalt. These resources are necessary ingredients in manufacturing the … Continued
Seven days have gone past since we set sail from Astoria, and every day we have looked at these methane seeps. Bubbles, nosy sablefish, half-buried clams, and colorful corals have dominated our ROV feeds from SuBastian. But in this log, I would like to shed a little light on a different aspect of all of … Continued
Jagged piles of molten rock, sulfurous smoke, exploding gaseous emissions, shifting landscapes, otherworldly creatures, scalding acidic fluids, swirling plumes of volcanic gasses and particles, and crushing pressure of the overlying sea: what is not to like about active submarine volcanoes? If that’s not reason enough for come to these places, how about an opportunity to … Continued
Volcanic activity is enthralling, but when observed deep below the seafloor from a Remotely Operated Vehicle, like SuBastian, it has an additional mysterious and dream-like quality. Over the course of the next six weeks, Falkor will be sailing over one of the most active underwater volcano sites in the world, the Mata Volcano group.
Falkor’s journey from Nah Trang, Vietnam to the island of Guam was over nearly 1200 nautical miles of open ocean, of which the majority is uncharted – despite being in an area of strong scientific interest. Even with no scientists on board, Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Technicians always aim to run a suite of science sensors as … Continued
One of the main goals of the Perth Canyon research cruise is to locate and collect a variety of marine organisms that are living down at great depths, in particular deep-sea corals. But what are deep-sea corals and why are researchers so interested in them? Deep-sea corals are widely distributed within the earth’s oceans and … Continued
As you may have noticed, there is a lot of high-tech experimental equipment and instruments on an oceanographic research cruise.
For new comers to science, it is important that they begin their journey in some particular way.
If you have not already become enamored by the beautiful and diverse marine zooplankton that we have been talking about over the past week, let me give you one more reason– they glow! Well, some of them do at least, and one of the projects on this cruise has been to dig a bit deeper … Continued
