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.
The Mariana region is home to the Mariana subduction system. This November, scientists shed light on the Mariana back-arc spreading center looking for new sites of hydrothermal activity.
Perth Canyon is one of Australia’s subsea treasures. Yet many of its deeper reaches remained unexplored, until Falkor’s visit with a deep-diving ROV. This first survey of life in the canyon provided a baseline of deep corals, which will aid in determining the likely future impacts of warming seas and ocean acidification.
At the end of March, Falkor headed to a spectacular, isolated, coral wonder known as Scott Reef. The goals of this project were to improve techniques and algorithms for efficiently coordinating deployments of multiple exploratory vehicles so they can be left unattended to accomplish tasks like detailed seafloor mapping.
The Timor Sea expedition explored factors that affect the health of remote coral reefs and the connections between reefs. This collaborative project expands on previous research at shallower reefs, and encompasses the first ever exploration of deeper sites.
In June of 2013, R/V Falkor will be using the hybrid underwater robotic vehicle Nereus, to explore the depths of the Mid-Cayman Rise, which reaches more than 6,500 meters (~4 miles)
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.
AUV Sentry will be used at Hawaii’s underwater volcano, Loihi Seamount, whose base remains largely unexplored. The team will survey and sample the seamount to better understand the dispersion of hydrothermal fluids from Loihi to the Pacific Ocean.
