The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) is the largest and deepest UNESCO World Heritage Site on Earth. Approximately the size of California, PIPA was the first Marine Protected Area (MPA) of its kind. In October, Dr. Erik Cordes (Temple University) and his team will explore never seen before seamounts and atolls within PIPA with R/V Falkor and ROV SuBastian.
In an innovative whole-reef approach, scientists will sail on Falkor this August and September for a 29-day expedition to reconstruct past sea levels in the Pacific. Falkor will sail along the central Hawaiian Islands and Line Islands in a two-part expedition using both an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) SuBastian.
R/V Falkor travels from Oregon up to the Alaskan Gulf on an expedition to better characterize organisms in the Abyssal Plain region and determine the extent microplastics can be found in these deep systems.
The expedition’s second leg focused on gathering video records of the life found in and around lower-oxygen zones using the ROV ROPOS.
During the first leg of the Open Ocean to Inner Sea expedition, the Canadian research team collected basic oxygen and other measurements offshore of Vancouver Island.
This unpresented study of microbes and viruses that live within the rocky layers of the seafloor was conducted using ROV ROPOS, 575 kilometers southwest of the underwater volcano Axial Seamount.
