Cruise Report for ‘Deep-Sea Coral Gardens’ Expedition 2019 : R/V Shearwater SW-19-06

This 2019 expedition was a continuation of the ‘Patterns in Deep-Sea Corals’ expeditions from 2015-2017 (Caldow et al., 2015; Etnoyer et al., 2016). The research team embarked from Santa Barbara, CA in June of 2019 aboard NOAA Research Vessel (R/V) Shearwater with the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Beagle. The objectives of this expedition were a continuation of work to explore newly mapped deep-water habitat (>40-50 m) around the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary (CINMS) in order to ground-truth these maps and to evaluate the distribution of mesophotic and deep-sea corals and fishes in relation to surficial geology