RRS Discovery Cruise 225, 24 Feb-07 Mar 1997. Studies of mass wasting in the Agadir Basin and sediment transport in the Gulf of Cadiz - incorporating trials of the giant piston corer

This was the second cruise using the new SOC giant piston corer. The objectives were to complete the testing of the giant piston corer which was begun on cruise D219 in November/December, 1995 and to collect giant piston cores from the Agadir Basin, Gulf of Cadiz and Portuguese margin. We showed that the original problems with the ship's gantry have been overcome and that the ship is now capable of handling the loads experienced during deployment and especially pullout. A large number of relatively minor problems were experienced during the cruise with the design and configuration of the corer. We worked through these systematically until cores were being obtained on a regular basis. A total of 9 cores were obtained from 14 coring attempts. The longest core was 15.97 m long. The quality of cores recovered was excellent

RRS Discovery Cruise 219, 28 Nov-11 Dec 1995. Mass wasting off Portugal and the Canary Islands - investigation by giant piston coring

Cruise D219 was beset with problems - bad weather, the need to transfer seamen to port on two separate occasions for compassionate reasons, combined with the need for further trials of the coring system limited our coring attempts to 6 deployments of which only one produced a core. After only 12 days at sea considerable wear was detected on the ship's coring gantry making it unsafe for further work. The cruise was therefore terminated one week early. Nevertheless, we believe that the corer will work and produce good quality cores when the problems with the ship have been rectified

RRS Discovery Cruise 249, 19 Aug-10 Sep 2000. History of sedimentation in the Gulf of Cadiz: investigations with the SOC giant piston corer

This was the third cruise using the new SOC giant piston corer. The objectives were to complete the testing of the giant piston corer which was begun on cruise D219 in November/December 1995 and cruise D225 in February/March 1997, and to collect giant piston cores from the Gulf of Cadiz on sites selected from the TOBI survey carried out on cruise D244 in December 1999. As on previous cruises we had problems with both the ships equipment (outboard sheave on coring gantry), and the giant piston corer. The sheave problem necessitated 2.5 days in port plus transit time. This combined with some weather downtime severely limited the amount of work which could be carried out. Nevertheless, we resolved some coring issues, especially proving that elastic rebound of the kevlar is not a major problem. We also managed to take a consistent series of good cores with a 15 metre barrel, and although all the 27 metre barrel cores bent, the bending took place above the sediment surface leaving a good quality core below. The longest core recovered was 18.1 metres and 21 cores were obtained in all. The cruise also involved testing the scatterometer. This proved to be a failure due to multiple electronic problems and no data was recorded in any of its two deployments

The impact of deep-sea fisheries and implementation of the UNGA Resolutions 61/105 and 64/72. Report of an international scientific workshop

The scientific workshop to review fisheries management, held in Lisbon in May 2011, brought together 22 scientists and fisheries experts from around the world to consider the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions on high seas bottom fisheries: what progress has been made and what the outstanding issues are. This report summarises the workshop conclusions, identifying examples of good practice and making recommendations in areas where it was agreed that the current management measures fall short of their target

Assessing plume impacts caused by polymetallic nodule mining vehicles

Deep-sea mining may be just a few years away and yet society is struggling to assess the positive aspects, such as increasing the supply of metals for battery production to fuel the green revolution, versus the potentially large environmental impacts. Mining of polymetallic (manganese) nodules from the deep ocean is likely to be the first mineral resource targeted and will involve direct impacts to hundreds of km2 of seabed per mine per year. However, the mining activity will also cause the generation of large sediment plumes that will spread away from the mine site and have both immediate and long-term effects over much wider areas. We discuss what the impacts of plumes generated near the seabed by mining vehicles may be and how they might be measured in such challenging environments. Several different mining vehicles are under development around the world and depending on their design some may create larger plumes than others. We discuss how these vehicles could be compared so that better engineering designs could be selected and to encourage innovation in dealing with plume generation and spread. These considerations will aid the International Seabed Authority (ISA) that has the task of regulating mining activities in much of the deep sea in its commitment to promote the Best Available Technology (BAT) and Best Environmental Practice (BEP)

The impact of deep-sea fisheries and implementation of the UNGA Resolutions 61/105 and 64/72. Report of an international scientific workshop, National Oceanography Centre, Southampton

The scientific workshop to review fisheries management, held in Lisbon in May 2011, brought together 22 scientists and fisheries experts from around the world to consider the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) resolutions on high seas bottom fisheries: what progress has been made and what the outstanding issues are. This report summarises the workshop conclusions, identifying examples of good practice and making recommendations in areas where it was agreed that the current management measures fall short of their target.Peer reviewe

RRS Charles Darwin Cruise CD157, 28 May - 13 June 2004. Sediment transport through the Setubal and Nazare Canyons

The main objective of the cruise was to groundtruth the sidescan sonar coverage of the Setubal and Nazare Canyons that was collected on the RV Pelagia in November 2003. A range of corers including box, mega, kastenlot and piston provided a range of possibilities to core sediment of varying grainsize from gravel to mud. In addition a deeptowed profiler was used to collect subsurface profiles across the canyons, but plans to use SHRIMP were abandoned due to problems with the conducting cable. The coring was a success given the difficult topography; site location was aided by the TOBI sidescan survey completed in 2003, making it possible to hit relatively small targets just a few hundred metres across. Careful choice of corer type ensured core recovery in the sequence of mixed sands and muds. No corers worked well in the Nazare thalweg due to presumed hard or sandy seabed.The data will be used to groundtruth the TOBI sidescan and to determine the flux of sediment through the Setubal and Nazare Canyons. Initial interpretations suggest significant differences between the canyons and strong changes in the amount of activity with time

RRS "Discovery" Cruise D297, 27 Jul - 16 Aug 2005. The geobiology of the Nazare and Setubal Canyons, Portuguese Continental Margin

The main objective of this cruise was to complete the geological survey of the Setubal and Nazare canyons including more sidescan sonar survey in the canyon mouths and on the lower continental rise north of the mouth of Setubal mouth. Other major objectives were to carry out sampling of the seabed for meio and macro fauna at 3 depth transects in each canyon; to run a series of SHRIMP video runs in the canyons at different depths to quantify the seabed organisms; to measure the amount and type of particulate matter in the water column, particularly near the seabed at the study sites, and to investigate the benthic ichthyofauna and bioluminescence using bottom landers.This cruise provided data for the EU FP6 project HERMES (Hotspot Ecosystem Research on the Margins of European Seas), as well completing work for the EU FP5 project EUROSTRATAFORM

RRS James Cook Cruise 10, 13 May-07 Jul 2007. Hotspot ecosystems in the NE Atlantic, UK contribution to the HERMES Project. Mud volcanoes in the Gulf of Cadiz; submarine canyons west of Portugal; submarine canyons in the northern Bay of Biscay

The major objective of RRS James Cook Cruise 10 was to increase our understanding of how seafloor environmental variables affect the biodiversity, structure, function and dynamics of faunal communities in two specific ‘biological hotspot’ environments, mud volcanoes and submarine canyons, on the NE Atlantic continental slope. The cruise was jointly supported by OCEANS 2025 (Theme 5) and the EU Hotspot Environmental Research on the Margins of European Seas (HERMES) Project. The work was based mainly on the use of the Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) ISIS, but a wide suite of additional techniques including sediment coring, water column measurement and sampling, benthic trawling and swath mapping were also deployed. Forty-one ROV dives, some lasting for up to 36 hours, were completed during a highly successful cruise. The ROV programme included swath mapping, video and still photography, sediment coring using both push and mini-box corers, rock sampling, collection of biological samples, water sampling, subseafloor temperature measurement, and the placing and manipulating of a variety of seafloor experiments