The main aim of JC125 was to carry out habitat mapping work in the Whittard Canyon, NE Atlantic, in order to obtain a better insight in the biodiversity patterns, benthic habitat distributions and sediment transport processes of submarine canyons. At the same time, the objective was also to test a number of novel habitat mapping techniques, including sideways multibeam mapping of steep and overhanging cliffs using the Autosub6000 AUV (Autonomous Underwater Vehicle), which was specifically adapted for this task. The four-week expedition was the second cruise of the CODEMAP project (COmplex Deep-sea Ecosystems: Mapping
habitat heterogeneity As Proxy for biodiversity), funded by the European Research Council (Grant No 258482).
Two short ‘tag-on’ cruises were added to this main expedition: JC124 covered four days of seabed monitoring in the Haig Fras and Canyons Marine Conservation Zones as part of the DEFRA-funded project “Novel AUV and Glider deployments to inform future MPA and MSFD monitoring strategy in UK shelf waters?”. JC126 consisted of three days of ROV vibrocorer trials for the NERC-funded technology grant NERC Grant NE/0176581. Together, the five-week voyage was nick-named ‘CODEMAP2015’.
To achieve its goals, CODEMAP2015 made extensive use of deep-water marine robotics: in a first for UK science, the Autosub6000 AUV, the Isis ROV (Remotely Operated Vehicle) and a Seaglider provided by the University of East Anglia were operating in the canyon, simultaneously, deployed from the RRS James Cook. They provided an unprecedented insight in the structure and processes of the submarine canyon. The nested survey design that was adopted throughout the cruise combined canyon-wide shipboard and glider surveys with AUV-based acoustics and ROV-based multibeam and HD video recordings. This enabled the integrated observation of different canyon processes at the scale they occur, ranging from 10s of km to a few mm
