WEBVTT

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NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is the only U.S. federal ship dedicated to ocean exploration.

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The Windows to the Deep 2019 expedition is all about understanding the deepwater areas offshore the eastern United States.

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The deepwater areas from Delaware to Florida are some of the least explored along the U.S. east coast.

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We have several major goals for this expedition.

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One goal is to characterize the diversity and extent of deep-sea coral and sponge communities.

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Another goal is to map, survey, and sample geologic features such as submarine canyons.

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On this expedition, we are also investigating potential seep sites in order to better understand these unique habitats.

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Coral reefs, including deepwater coral reefs, are some of the most valuable marine ecosystems on the planet.

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They create structures that provide shelter, food, and nursery habitats to other invertebrates and fish.

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Some of them might even contain potential medicines and biopharmaceuticals.

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We've conducted a number of dives on this expedition that have revealed extensive deep-sea coral and sponge communities.

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Some of these were unknown to us before we mapped these habitats and then conducted ROV dives of these sites.

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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.

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On this expedition, we were able to conduct an ROV dive on one of these knolls and discovered a massive amount of Lophelia coral.

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This is honestly one of the largest aggregates of thickets of Lophelia that I've seen of this size.

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Because the colonies themselves are relatively dense and then you have so many of them all next to each other. Yeah.

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In addition to contributing to the biological knowledge of this area, we've also been mapping, surveying, and sampling geological features.

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Our mapping operations allow us to identify the locations of geologic features such as submarine canyons.

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And with the ROV, we are able to visually inspect these areas and collect rock samples for future studies.

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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,

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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.

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Investigating potential seeps is a major goal of this expedition.

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Cold seeps have global significance for the transfer of methane carbon, from long-term storage in seafloor sediments into the water.

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When we found the seeps on this margin, we were very surprised because everyone thought this margin was cold, old, and boring.

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And then we found hundreds of seeps. We've really come full circle here.

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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.

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It just shows the value of this sort of discovery and exploration mode that we're in here.

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In addition to our planned goals, we occasionally see things that are completely unexpected.

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On one dive, we came upon a recently dead swordfish that was being eaten by sharks.

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Observations of this type of behavior are rare, and the ROV allowed us to watch this amazing scene.

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This is so rare, to be able to see something like this.

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More evidence, really, of how these systems work.

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The work we do on the Okeanos is truly comprehensive.

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This expedition has contributed greatly to our knowledge of deepwater habitats.

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Some of the things we've seen have been truly once in a lifetime experiences.