by Tasnim Patel, RBINS Life in the deep-sea is no picnic and dedicating your life to studying our last truly unexplored wilderness isn’t easy either. To sample fauna in the abyssal plains requires courage, expertise, commitment, financial backing and in my case …a pinch of luck. I’m studying deep-sea scavenging crustaceans, which are not only […]
Mapping the seafloor/Die Kartierung des Meeresbodens
(Deutsche Version unten) How do you plan research that is to be conducted at the seafloor in 4000 meter water depth? How do you choose the locations for your studies in a large area that you may not know much about yet? How do you pick the best spot to deploy sensors? – Which path […]
BOBO and the 7 (+7) dwarfs: How to sense the deep sea
by Sabine Haalboom (NIOZ) The first half of the cruise has passed and we’ve finished the baseline studies in the Belgian license area. Doing my PhD research in marine geology at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), my main interest is the particle dynamics in the bottom boundary layer (i.e. the layer close […]
SO268: What’s up on the seabed?
At the bottom of the Ocean, in ~4000m water depth they can be found in high abundances: Manganese nodules. Industry and states are interested in these potato-sized objects as a new metal resource. But before commercial mining will start, the potential ecological impacts need to be investigated. Therefore, the project MiningImpact (funded through JPI Oceans) […]