NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is the only U.S. federal ship dedicated to ocean exploration.
The Windows to the Deep 2019 expedition is all about understanding the deepwater areas offshore the eastern United States.
The deepwater areas from Delaware to Florida are some of the least explored along the U.S. east coast.
We have several major goals for this expedition.
One goal is to characterize the diversity and extent of deep-sea coral and sponge communities.
Another goal is to map, survey, and sample geologic features such as submarine canyons.
On this expedition, we are also investigating potential seep sites in order to better understand these unique habitats.
Coral reefs, including deepwater coral reefs, are some of the most valuable marine ecosystems on the planet.
They create structures that provide shelter, food, and nursery habitats to other invertebrates and fish.
Some of them might even contain potential medicines and biopharmaceuticals.
We've conducted a number of dives on this expedition that have revealed extensive deep-sea coral and sponge communities.
Some of these were unknown to us before we mapped these habitats and then conducted ROV dives of these sites.
For example, in 2018 we mapped a section of the Blake Plateau that was thought to be flat, and we discovered it is a series of knolls.
On this expedition, we were able to conduct an ROV dive on one of these knolls and discovered a massive amount of Lophelia coral.
This is honestly one of the largest aggregates of thickets of Lophelia that I've seen of this size.
Because the colonies themselves are relatively dense and then you have so many of them all next to each other. Yeah.
In addition to contributing to the biological knowledge of this area, we've also been mapping, surveying, and sampling geological features.
Our mapping operations allow us to identify the locations of geologic features such as submarine canyons.
And with the ROV, we are able to visually inspect these areas and collect rock samples for future studies.
There's been some discussion on the chat of what this is, kind of first impressions looking it at down, seeing all of these rounded rocks,
there's some question of whether maybe these are manganese nodules and that's one of the reasons why we've decided to take a sample here.
Investigating potential seeps is a major goal of this expedition.
Cold seeps have global significance for the transfer of methane carbon, from long-term storage in seafloor sediments into the water.
When we found the seeps on this margin, we were very surprised because everyone thought this margin was cold, old, and boring.
And then we found hundreds of seeps. We've really come full circle here.
The Okeanos first identified these sites, and now, based on seep maps that we've compiled over the years, we chose a cluster of seeps that looked good.
It just shows the value of this sort of discovery and exploration mode that we're in here.
In addition to our planned goals, we occasionally see things that are completely unexpected.
On one dive, we came upon a recently dead swordfish that was being eaten by sharks.
Observations of this type of behavior are rare, and the ROV allowed us to watch this amazing scene.
This is so rare, to be able to see something like this.
More evidence, really, of how these systems work.
The work we do on the Okeanos is truly comprehensive.
This expedition has contributed greatly to our knowledge of deepwater habitats.
Some of the things we've seen have been truly once in a lifetime experiences.