The unknown and the unexplored: insights Into the Pacific deep-sea following NOAA CAPSTONE expeditions

Over a 3-year period, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized and implemented a Pacific-wide field campaign entitled CAPSTONE: Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean NEeds. Under the auspices of CAPSTONE, NOAA mapped 597,230 km2 of the Pacific seafloor (with ∼61% of mapped area located within US waters), including 323 seamounts, conducted 187 ROV dives totaling 891.5 h of ROV benthic imaging time, and documented >347,000 individual organisms. This comprehensive effort yielded dramatic insight into differences in biodiversity across depths, regions, and features, at multiple taxonomic scales. For all deep sea taxonomic groups large enough to be visualized with the ROV, we found that fewer than 20% of the species were able to be identified. The most abundant and highest diversity taxa across the dataset were from three phyla (Cnidaria, Porifera, and Echinodermata). We further examined these phyla for taxonomic assemblage patterns by depth, geographic region, and geologic feature. Within each taxa, there were multiple genera with specific distribution and abundance by depth, region, and feature. Additionally, we observed multiple genera with broad abundance and distribution, which may focus future ecological research efforts. Novel taxa, records, and behaviors were observed, suggestive of many new types of species interactions, drivers of community composition, and overall diversity patterns. To date, only 13.8% of the Pacific has been mapped using modern methods. Despite the incredible amount of new known and unknown information about the Pacific deep-sea, CAPSTONE is far from the culminating experience the name suggests. Rather, it marks the beginning of a new era for exploration that will offer extensive opportunities via mapping, technology, analysis, and insights.Published versio

Corrigendum: the unknown and the unexplored: insights into the Pacific deep-sea following NOAA CAPSTONE expeditions

Published versio

The Evolution of Information Management in Oceanographic Exploration

Emerging technologies in data collection, processing, and telecommunication have made data management a vital and ever evolving component of scientific research and exploration. Automation and streamlining of these technologies have enabled a paradigm shift in the approach to ocean research aboard the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer. Telepresence technologies allow the real time collaboration of at sea technicians and scientists with shore side scientists as well as near real time access to the datasets being collected. This approach has allowed for a large team of shore side experts in various fields to drive at-sea collection and exploration efforts, enabling the analysis and evaluation of as high quality data as possible. Automated and standardized data management efforts that have been integrated into this model allow for the rapid and efficient collection, processing, and archival of the information in national public archives. As new sampling and survey technologies are developed they have been, and will continue to be, adapted into the existing end-to-end information management model. Most recently this was accomplished in a collaborative effort between NOAA, NSF, WHOI, Duke, URI, and the USGS in a cruise along the Blake Ridge and Cape Fear Diapirs. This cruise successfully integrated shipboard data collection with the Sentry AUV in the search for, and exploration of, cold seep communities along the US Atlantic Margin

NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer 2012 Field Season in the Northern Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Atlantic Continental Margin

The NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, jointly operated by the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research and the NOAA Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, is America\u27s only federally managed ship dedicated solely to ocean exploration. The 2012 field season was spent exploring the northern Gulf of Mexico and the U.S. Atlantic continental shelf break and slope. In the Gulf of Mexico, mapping and remotely operated vehicle operations focused on the salt domes and canyons offshore Mississippi and Louisiana, and characterized several of the hundreds of seeps that were detected in the water column backscatter data collected with the ship\u27s Kongsberg EM 302 multibeam sonar (30 kHz) during the 2011 field season. A team of NOAA and non-NOAA partners identified priority frontier areas along the continental shelf and slope between North Carolina and Cape Cod, mapping numerous canyons selected for focused mapping exploration in partnership with the North East Fisheries Science Center, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (a state level partnership between various states including NY, NJ, DE, MD, and VA), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Virginia Sea Grant. The 2012 mapping efforts built on data collected during the 2011 field season. Okeanos Explorer data were leveraged by NOAA Ship Henry B. Bigelow to conduct towed camera operations to ground truth multibeam backscatter data for deepwater coral habitat assessment. The Blake Ridge and Cape Fear Diapirs offshore North Carolina were a third focus of exploration operations. Seven 900 meter high cold seeps were discovered in the diapir province. Exploration incorporated WHOI\u27s Sentry autonomous underwater vehicle and its full suite of mapping and oceanographic sensors were used to characterize six seep sites. All data collected by Okeanos Explorer are available via the NOAA public archives with metadata records within 60 to 90 days of the end of each cruise

Integration of NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer Seafloor Mapping, Little Hercules ROV, and Sentry AUV Data into Ocean Exploration Operations and Public Data Holdings

Within NOAA’s Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, the Okeanos Explorer Program’s main tools for preliminary ocean exploration include a Kongsberg EM 302 multibeam sonar (30 kHz), Kongsberg EK 60 singlebeam sonar (18 kHz), and Knudsen subbottom profiler (3.5 kHz chirp). The program devoted multiple expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico and U.S. Atlantic Margin during its 2012 Field Season to confirm and further develop the EM 302 multibeam sonar’s water column backscatter data capability to detect gaseous seeps and vents. While mapping in the seafloor and water column in the vicinity of the salt domes of the Northern Gulf of Mexico, the EM 302 detected over two hundred distinct seeps in the water column. Several seeps have been explored in more detail using high definition cameras and lighting systems of the remotely operated vehicle Little Hercules and the camera platform Seirios. This included filming bubbles escaping from the seafloor at the locations determined by the EM 302 data to ground truth EM302 observations and deduce other properties of these gas seeps e.g. gas flux, and effect of these seeps on surrounding ecosystem. These seeps are now a major research focus area by scientists at the University of New Hampshire’s Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping and other academic institutions around the U.S., and the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. . While mapping the Blake Ridge and Cape Fear Diapirs, seven distinct seeps were detected, each rising approximately 900 meters from the seafloor in water depths ranging from 2200 to 2500 meters. Several of these seeps were further explored with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute’s Sentry autonomous underwater vehicle, utilizing itsReson 7125 high resolution multibeam, photo imagery, sidescan, subbottom, and various in-situ sensors to characterize the local environment. It is to be noted that very few of these seeps were previously known. Following the Okeanos Explorer Program’s paradigm of “Always Exploring”, the mapping team collects data not only during focused mapping operations, but also during all transits. Okeanos Explorer data are collected with regard to the Integrated Ocean and Coastal Mapping Center’s concept to “map once use many times”, which aims to encourage and enable the multidisciplinary use of seafloor mapping data, including by the fields of marine archaeology, hydrographic mapping, extended continental shelf, biology, geology, geophysics, biopharmaceutical, ocean energy and resources, marine managed areas, fisheries, corals, oceanography, hazards modeling and assessments, education and outreach. To this end, all mapping, CTD and meteorology data sets collected by the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer are monitored and evaluated in the field for quality control purposes, and are made available through NOAA’s public archives within 60 to 90 days of data collection, in useable formats and with associated metadata records. Additionally, all data sets collected by vehicles onboard the ship, including ROVs and AUVs, are made available directly following each cruise via NOAA’s public archives

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration: EM302 Multibeam Survey of the Sangihe-Talaud Region, North Sulawesi, Indonesia

The NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer has just completed a successful 2010 field season, including its first partnership-building mission to Indonesia, INDEX-SATAL 2010 (Indonesia Exploration Sangihe-Talaud region). The mission was part of President Obama’s initiative to build science and technology partnerships with Muslim nations. The Okeanos Explorer is equipped with progressive technology, including a Kongsberg EM302 (30 kHz) multibeam system with bottom backscatter and water column backscatter data collection capabilities. The mapping in the Sangihe-Talaud region of the Celebes Sea produced over 31,000 square kilometers of high resolution data, ranging in depth from 244 meters to more than 7000 meters. The mapped regions include the majority of the western side of the central Sangihe volcanic arc and a narrow transect across the arc in the south. A ~350 km long transect across the northern end of the central Sangihe arc was also mapped, north of the Talaud Islands, and extends eastward across the Sangihe Basin and Molucca Trench to the Philippine Trench. A recent synthesis of deep marine data by Pubellier et al. (2005)1 documents numerous active and inactive subduction zones of opposite polarity in this narrow region. The high resolution bathymetry reveals new details of the seafloor morphology in this complex tectonic regime. At least five seamounts were mapped, including an unknown 1500 meter high seamount and the volcano Kawio Barat, which rises approximately 3500 meters from the seafloor and is the site of white smokers and surprisingly dense and diverse deepwater biological communities. Several additional features were observed, including submarine channels, fans, debris aprons with blocks up to 800 meters in diameter, accretionary ridges and basins, trenches, and some flat topped seamounts. These well-defined features are consistent with the complex interactions between arc development, mass wasting, and subduction. These data provide new opportunities for further exploration in the Sangihe-Talaud region and work is already underway by regional experts in geology, geophysics, biology, and biogeography to use the Okeanos Explorer’s data to investigate the geological processes and biological diversity in this region

To Explore or to Research: Trends in modern age ocean studies

The recommendations of President\u27s Panel Report on Ocean Exploration gave rise to NOAA\u27s Office of Ocean Exploration in 2001, and helped establish NOAA as the lead agency for a federal ocean exploration program. The panel defined exploration as discovery through disciplined, diverse observations and recordings of findings including rigorous, systematic observations and documentation of biological, chemical, physical, geological, and archaeological aspects of the ocean in the three dimensions of space and in time. Here we ask the question about the fine line that separates ‘Exploration’ and ‘Research’. We contend that successful exploration aims to establish new lines of knowledge or give rise to new hypothesis as compared to research where primary goal is to prove or disprove an existing hypothesis. However, there can be considerable time lag before a hypothesis can be established after an initial observation. This creates interesting challenges for ocean exploration because instant ‘return on investment’ can not be readily shown. Strong media and public interest is garnered by far and apart exciting discoveries about new biological species or processes. However, most of the ocean exploration work goes to systematically extract basic information about a previously unknown area. We refer to this activity as baseline characterization in providing information about an area which can support hypothesis generation and further research to prove or disprove this hypothesis. Examples of such successful characterization include OER endeavors in the Gulf of Mexico that spanned over 10 years and it provided baseline characterization in terms of biological diversity and distribution on basin-wide scale. This baseline characterization was also conveniently used by scientists to conduct research on benthic communities to study effects of deep water horizon incident. More recently similar characterization has been attempted by NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer from 2011 - 2013 field season in NE Atlantic canyon. This has been one of the first ever campaigns to systematically map the NE canyons from US-Canada border to Cape Hatteras. After the 3D mapping of the canyons that included multibeam sonar derived bathymetry and backscatter, OER provided the first ever comprehensive maps of the seafloor and water column which have become the basis for further exploration and research in this region. NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer currently remains the only federal vessel dedicated solely to Ocean Exploration. Examples of some of the recent discoveries of the ship will be provided to explain as how Exploration and Research are merging together in modern era of ocean sciences

Evidence of Extensive Gas Venting at the Blake Ridge and Cape Fear Diapirs

Despite the important geologic, geotechnical and biogeochemical implications of seabed fluid escape, the abundance and global distribution of cold seeps remain poorly characterized. Globally, seabed fluid escape is sometimes associated with chemosynthetic communities. Fluid escape on continental margins has also been invoked as a possible trigger for submarine slope failures and seafloor collapse. Along the U.S. Atlantic Margin, acoustic and geochemical water column anomalies have been observed in the Hudson Canyon, the mid-Atlantic shelf break, and the Blake Ridge Diapir (ODP Leg 164 site 996). Of these areas, only the Blake Ridge Diapir site is known to host chemosynthetic communities, a strong seafloor indicator of active seabed fluid flow. In July 2012, NOAA Ocean Exploration Program expedition EX1205L1 identified and characterized cold seeps within the Blake Ridge gas hydrate province, using the platform Okeanos Explorer and the Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Sentry. The expedition observed seven spatially distinct water column anomalies using shipboard EM302 30 kHz multibeam and EK60 18 kHz single beam echosounders. These anomalies originate at the seabed and extend up to 900 m above the seafloor. Interpreted as bubble plumes, these anomalies correspond in six locations to Sentry-collected photos documenting chemosynthetic organisms (e.g. mussels and clams). Three plumes are associated with the known Blake Ridge Diapir seep site, while two additional plumes and newly discovered seep communities occur within 2 km of the original site. For the first time, a gas plume and associated seep community were also observed on the main Cape Fear Diapir. Co-located 3.5 kHz subbottom data, including lines that re-occupy a 3D survey conducted in 2003 across the Blake Ridge Diapir (doi:10.1029/2006GL028859), reveal subsurface conduits presently associated with these seeps and should allow us to constrain the plumbing systems in two and three dimensions. No methane seeps were found along 210 km of surveys conducted at the presumed upper edge of gas hydrate stability on the continental slope between Blake Ridge and the head of the Cape Fear slide. Nonetheless, the discovery of new seeps indicates abundant active methane escape along the southern portion of the US Atlantic Margin and calls for a reevaluation of the role of methane venting in regional seafloor processes there. In addition, these results triple the number of known cold seep communities along the US Atlantic margin, thus providing insight into biogeographic connectivity