Nautilus NA028: ROV Cruise report - Sample records of corals, mussels and sediments collected around Macondo, Gulf of Mexico - June 21 - July 5, 2013

This was a 16 day cruise to support the research of the ECOGIG consortium, funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. The research goals of the consortium are to investigate the ecosystem effects of natural oil and gas seepage to the Gulf of Mexico. The goals of the cruise were to visit benthic communities, primarily deep water corals, in the vicinity of the Macondo well, the location of the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Specific tasks included detailed repeat imagery of known locations on the seafloor, collections of live corals for experiments carried out on board the ship, acquisition of sediment push cores, marker deployments, and exploration of unknown areas of the sites. Portions of the cruise were conducted alongside the R/V Endeavor and logistics and sampling were closely coordinated between the vessels. Between leaving Gulfport, MS on June 21st and arriving again on July 5th, we were able to make 14 dives with the ROVs Hercules and Argus. The dives ranged from 4 to 20 hours each, and went to depths between 400 and 2600 meters. On the cruise, we surveyed deep-sea coral sites that were impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, re-imaging corals that we have been monitoring since the spill. We collected live coral from the seafloor, keeping them alive on board and completing a series of oil- and dispersant-exposure experiments during the cruise (R1.x132.136:0005). We also collected a series of samples of the water just above corals and natural gas seeps, and a series of sediment samples from the same environments. We conducted most of the water and sediment sampling in close coordination with the R/V Endeavor, guiding their sampling to target the same locations that we discovered with the ROVs. In addition to these successes, perhaps the greatest impact of the cruise was in the Education and Outreach achieved through the telepresence capability of the ship. All of the dives were broadcast live over the Nautilus Live and Exploration Now web sites. We reached over 8,000 people and had over 22,000 web site hits during our cruise. In addition, the three educators on board reached thousands of other people through live interactive shows with various museums and aquaria including the Mystic Aquarium, the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach CA, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Houston Natural History Museum, and the Titanic Museum in Belfast, Ireland.