In preparation for our 2022 field season, NOAA Ocean Exploration conducted a “shake down” of the mission systems on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf of Mexico and the western Straits of Florida February 23-March 3, 2022.
Between March and October, Ocean Exploration Trust will use Exploration Vessel Nautilus to explore the waters of the central Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian Islands, in the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, and in Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument.
From April 6 - 19, a team of researchers used emerging technologies to explore deepwater habitats off the coast of Puerto Rico that are poorly explored, yet likely host a wide variety of marine life, including commercially important species and species new to science.
From May 1 - 14, 2022, scientists from the Florida Atlantic University Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute will conduct an expedition to explore coral and sponge habitats within Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary and nearby areas in the northwestern Gulf of Mexico in order to assess their potential for biopharmaceutical products.
From October 1 to 10, 2019, scientists from three institutions - Florida State University, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, and NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science - sailed on Research Vessel Point Sur in the eastern Gulf of Mexico.
No known articles related to this expedition have been published at this time.
May through August 2022, NOAA and partners conducted Voyage to the Ridge 2022, a series of three telepresence-enabled ocean exploration expeditions on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer that included mapping operations and remotely operated vehicle dives to collect baseline information about unexplored and poorly understood deepwater areas of the Charlie-Gibbs Fracture Zone, Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and Azores Plateau.
May 10 - June 2, 2022: EX2204: Voyage to the Ridge (Mapping)
June 9 - July 30, 2022: EX2205: Voyage to the Ridge 2 (ROV and Mapping)
August 6 - September 2, 2022: EX2206: Voyage to the Ridge 3 (ROV and Mapping)
No known articles related to this expedition have been published at this time.
From May 23 - June 3, an expedition team used autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) to explore Lake Huron’s Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. They generated large datasets for training and validating machine learning models for shipwreck detection using sonar imagery.
From July 31-August 12, 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and NOAA Ocean Exploration explored a site on the Blake Plateau offshore of the Georgia coast. The specific purpose of the expedition was to better understand the long-term environmental impacts on the seafloor of experimental deep-sea resource-extraction technologies used at the site in the 1970s and generally any implications for potential similar deep-sea activities.
From February 24-March 11, 2022, a team of researchers explored the waters off Tinian and Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands to locate and document U.S. warplanes lost during World War II.
From March 10 - 28, 2022, NOAA Ocean Exploration conducted an exploratory ocean mapping expedition on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer focused on U.S. waters south of Puerto Rico generally deeper than 200 meters (656 feet).
April 4 - 28, NOAA Ocean Exploration led an expedition on NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. The two-fold purpose of this expedition is to fill mapping gaps in the Atlantic’s U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone and test deep-sea camera operations.
From April 7 - May 1, as part of the Luʻuaeaahikiikekumu - Ancient Seamounts of Liliʻuokalani Ridge expedition on Ocean Exploration Trust’s Exploration Vessel Nautilus, a team of researchers will explore seamounts of Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument to provide baseline information about the mineral resource potential of the seamounts and the animals and microbes that live on them in order to inform management and conservation of the area.
To understand how deep-sea corals respond to changes in ocean conditions such as ocean warming, deoxygenation, and acidification, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution, Florida State University, and Florida Atlantic University carried out two expeditions on Research Vessel (R/V) Point Sur in October 2019 and on R/V Hogarth in September 2020. In total, they conducted five remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives with ROV Global Explorer across deep coral mounds on the West Florida Slope of the Gulf of Mexico.
No known articles related to this expedition have been published at this time.
From May 15 - June 4, a team of Indigenous Alaskans, local community members, and scientists explored the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska. Their goal was to locate submerged cave and rock shelter entrances that would have been accessible to early inhabitants of the region.
Between May 26 - June 14, 2022, a team of scientists explored Escanaba Trough, about 200 miles off the coast of northern California, in order to characterize the hydrothermal sulfide system within the trough.
