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Deep Down Under expedition to the Coral Sea |
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Saturday, 19 December 2009 00:00 |
The Deep Down Under research expedition finished in Cairns, Australia after a successful voyage to the Queensland Plateau in the Coral Sea. The expedition aimed to investigate relict fauna, or animals that were previously thought to be extinct but have persisted almost unchanged on the deep reef slopes since the late Mesozoic (>65 MYA), such as sponges, brachiopods, echinoderms and Nautilus cephalopods. The expedition used a Cherokee Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) from the Centre for Marine Environmental Sciences (marum) in Bremen, Germany, to investigate deep-sea life down to about 800 metres depth.
Cherokee ROV in Townsville 29 Nov 2009
Prior to the expedition departure from Townsville on 30 November, I met with the science team and provided them with all the available deep-sea maps of the Coral Sea. The maps were used to plan ROV dives and transects down the sides of the Coral Sea reefs. Osprey Reef was the main focus area and the detailed 3D maps developed during the Deep Osprey Reef mapping project (internal link here) were very useful to the expedition. Post-cruise analysis will study the fauna specimens and rocks collected by the ROV, and study the high-quality underwater vision for habitat patterns.
Additional media
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Deep Down Under shiptrack animation [Google Earth kmz]
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