Follow along as participants in the cruise provide updates and reflections on their experiences, the science, the technology, and other elements of the expedition.
April 30, 2012 | By Fred Gorrell
Students from two maritime academies in high schools from Houston, Texas, joined the regional winners of the National Ocean Science Bowl from a third Houston high school, to tour NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, America’s ship for ocean exploration, while the ship was docked in Galveston.
Read moreApril 29, 2012 | By James A. Austin
The third and final cruise of the Okeanos Explorer’s 2012 Gulf of Mexico Expedition had three primary objectives.
Read moreApril 24, 2012 | By Robert S. Carney
During our exploration we have encountered deep-sea holothuroids, also known as “sea cucumbers,” which can manage this buoyancy task remarkably well. So well that we have to ask: How do they do it?
Read moreApril 23, 2012 | By Court Squires
Morale is just as important as every other facet of a successful journey on board the Okeanos Explorer; it is an assigned collateral duty that is an essential part of the seafaring way of life.
Read moreApril 22, 2012 | By Kody Kramer and Bill Shedd
On Friday, the Okeanos Explorer and her tandem remotely operated vehicles (ROV), Little Hercules and Seirios, dove on a never before seen area of the seafloor in Ewing Bank block 915 (EW915), 130 miles south of New Orleans.
Read moreApril 21, 2012 | By Mike Vecchione
A famous quote attributed to Louis Pasteur translates as, "In the field of observation chance only favors the prepared mind." As I mentioned in a mission log prepared during Leg 2 of this Okeanos Explorer cruise, a population of sperm whales permanently resides in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Presumably, this part of the Gulf is a good place for the whales to find food, so I have been looking for the big squids that these whales dive deep to catch.
Read moreApril 20, 2012 | By Erin Becker
During yesterday's dive, we searched for natural hydrocarbon seeps — areas where oil and natural gas slowly leak out of the seafloor. This is an entirely natural phenomenon and an important characteristic of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem.
Read moreApril 19, 2012 | By Doug Jones
At the start of any shipwreck investigation, there is always a palpable sense of curiosity, anticipation, and excitement as archaeologists wonder to themselves: What are we about to find?
Read moreApril 18, 2012 | By Tom Weber
Dive 06 of this expedition really began about seven months ago during what we call a water column mapping cruise on the Okeanos Explorer.
Read moreApril 17, 2012 | By Webb Pinner
As with most of the systems aboard the Okeanos Explorer, the video system and the video engineers that operate it play an important role in the ship’s mission of systematic ocean exploration.
Read moreApril 15, 2012 | By Dr. James (Jamie) A. Austin, Jr.
The third leg of the Okeanos Explorer Gulf of Mexico mission is operating in a part of the Gulf, the oldest sediments of which are part of the upward-moving Louann Formation. This large deposit of evaporites/salt was deposited about 160 million years ago when the Gulf of Mexico formed, as the continent of South America moved away from North America, a plate separation process known as rifting.
Read moreApril 14, 2012 | By Adam Skarke
Ocean exploration is commonly thought of in spatial terms, e.g., the creation of maps of previously unobserved seafloor. However, it has an equally important temporal component which addresses how ocean processes change through time.
Read moreApril 13, 2012 | By Richard Conway
VSAT stands for Very Small Aperture Terminal. VSATs are small Earth-based dish arrays ranging from 1.2 meters (four feet) to 3.8 meters (12.5 feet). The Okeanos Explorer dish is 3.7 meters.
Read moreApril 12, 2012 | By Dave Lovalvo
It’s 6 a.m. and the lights have come on. Our two underwater vehicles, Little Herc and Seirios are being prepared for their “electronic wakeup.”
Read moreApril 11, 2012 | By Court Squires
Think of your last road trip. It is likely you pored over maps, plotted your journey (possibly even rerouted it), fueled up, (hopefully) gave the vehicle a check-up, buckled everyone in, and were on your way. Now imagine a 225-foot former Navy ship brimming with scientists, observers, and crew personnel, as everyone prepares to set sail. A little bit more daunting, eh? It could be, but if you break it down you realize preparation is preparation, and those who want to succeed leave no duty, task, or responsibility left unfinished before takeoff.
Read moreApril 5, 2012 | By Tim Shank
Even two years following the Deepwater Horizon incident, determining the extent of exposure and types of impact to ecosystems in the deep Gulf of Mexico remains a high national priority.
Read moreApril 4, 2012 | By ROV Team
An interesting challenge was presented to the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) team last week: Develop a method to drop syntactic foam markers from Little Hercules to mark sites of interest for return dives.
Read moreApril 3, 2012 | By Robert S. Carney
Holothuroids, also called sea cucumbers, are an unusual class of the unusual phylum Echinodermata, which literally means animals with spiny skins.
Read moreApril 2, 2012 | By Tara Smithee
Working at sea has been both an incredible personal and professional experience for me. The Okeanos Explorer is filled with amazingly skilled and passionate people.
Read moreApril 1, 2012 | By Elizabeth “Meme” Lobecker
Working at sea has been both In the afternoon of March 27, when I laid out the lines to extend existing Okeanos Explorer multibeam coverage of the flat muddy bottom just west of the base of the West Florida Escarpment, I was not expecting the resulting data to generate very much excitement.
Read moreMarch 30, 2012 | By Karl McLetchie
Today’s dive, Dive 10, was on wreck VK0986. It is close to the mouth of the Mississippi River and we experienced strong currents and murky water.
Read moreMarch 28, 2012 | By Peter Etnoyer
This has been quite an interesting expedition so far, not only because of what we're exploring here in the deep Gulf of Mexico, but also because of the way we're exploring it. Along with many others, scientists from NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science/Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, SC, are participating remotely in the expedition using ‘telepresence’ technology via internet. We're far from the ship, but chat rooms, conference lines, video streams, FTP sites, and emails keep us plugged into the action aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer.
Read moreMarch 27, 2012 | By Daniel J. Warren
As I logged on to the Okeanos Explorer links this morning, I could hardly control my excitement over today’s dive on a potential shipwreck site.
Read moreMarch 26, 2012 | By Mike Vecchione
Between the deep-sea bottom and the sunlit surface waters are the open waters of the deep pelagic environment.
Read moreMarch 24, 2012 | By Erik Cordes
I have explored the depths of the ocean on a number of different ships with a variety of deep-sea vehicles, but I never done it from my desk.
Read moreMarch 23, 2012 | By Jeremy Potter
Early yesterday morning an electrical fire at a NOAA headquarters building caused havoc for a number of friends and colleagues. What most of them probably didn’t realize is that the fire also knocked out major communications mechanisms for all 18 NOAA ships. Well, all but one...
Read moreMarch 22, 2012 | By Pen-Yuan Hsing
The remotely operated vehicle (ROV) went in the water at 0800 EDT (on schedule), and we eagerly awaited the discoveries ahead of us as the ROV descended to the seafloor.
Read moreMarch 21, 2012 | By Jeremy Potter
By 0730, we had already cancelled today's dive at our primary location on the Florida Escarpment.
Read moreFebruary 27 – March 14, 2012 | By Mashkoor Malik, John Doroba, and Lt Megan Nadeau
NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer began her second voyage of the year from Charleston, SC, on February 27, 2012, and arrived in the vicinity of DeSoto canyon on March 4 and commenced mapping of the canyon.
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