Log Post: Where Are We, Where Are We Going

Marine Technician Jimbo (Paul Duncan) has spent all night, every night, for 24 nights keeping the Falkor’s multibeam sonar operational and recording data. The sonar sends “pings” of sound to the sea floor.  The pings bounce back.  The length of time between sending and receiving can be converted to depth.  Each pulse sends over 400 … Continued

Log Post: Surprise: Young Lava!

One of the joys of exploration is getting surprised. And boy, were we surprised when we found a lava flow on the seafloor that looks like it could have erupted yesterday! It is right in the area where we found big plumes and the most intense chemical anomalies during the last CTD tow-yo on what we … Continued

A yellow torpedo shaped autonomous underwater vehicle is dropped into a blue ocean with a launch and recovery system.

Log Post: The Strategy for Finding Hydrothermal Vents

Traducción al español disponible a continuación Written by Julie Huber and Dave Butterfield Given bad weather to the north at the Kane Fracture Zone, we decided to test our strategy for finding active hydrothermal vents at the Puy de Folles vent field. Previous work by French and Russian colleagues at this site focused on inactive … Continued

Log Post: Back from the Tasman Sea

After 26 days at sea, the T-Beam crew has sailed back into port along the Derwent River, and tied up on land. We never expected this work to be easy – battling with the constant barrage of storms headed directly from the southern ocean – the Tasman Sea did not disappoint.

News: Bringing Falkor to the Masses

Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor recently arrived in Honolulu after a 21 day expedition across the equator looking at small-scale mixing in the central Pacific Ocean. She is now undergoing scheduled upgrades before heading off in early October to map the world’s largest underwater volcano, Tamu Massif. While some of the projects during the upgrade … Continued

Log Post: Microzooplankton: Lawnmowers of the Sea

Take a breath, now take another… for one of those breaths you have a phytoplankton to thank. About half of the world’s oxygen comes from the photosynthesis of oceanic microscopic plants, called phytoplankton. These plants grow so fast that if there wasn’t some control on their population, they would turn the oceans into a green … Continued