Posts by dtrewcrist

The RCA 8 Team saw a Dumbo octopus at Southern Hydrate Ridge. They also have successfully deployed 100% of the equipment planned for Leg 2 of the OOI RCA O&M cruise. Double win, two ways. Dumbo and done. Two legs, missions accomplished.

A curious Brown catshark has shown up repeatedly while the RCA team has been working at Southern Hydrate Ridge on the OOI RCA O&M cruise! Here it is again, as the team surveys the site and manage the seafloor cables (orange loops) that send real-time data back to shore.  

After a year deployed in 80 meters (~260 ft) of water (and being hit by a log!) our Oregon Shelf camera has a little bit of growth on it. That’s why ROPOS is holding a brush: to clean off the lens and lights, so it can keep taking photos for another year!

The underwater state-of-the-art robotic vehicle ROPOS allows us to see what is happening at a highly active methane seep site -Southern Hydrate Ridge – hosting novel microbial communities sustained by methane and hydrogen sulfide. Watch life below the surface here.

Deep-sea octopuses (Graneledone boreopacifica) sometimes lurk among the basalt cliffs formed by underwater eruptions at the summit of Axial Seamount (off the coast of Oregon) like this scarred individual seen during the 2022 OOI Regional Cabled Array Operations and Maintenance expedition.    

Two hydrothermal vents at Axial Seamount visited by the ROV ROPOS during the OOI Cabled Array O&M cruise show the difference between an active “black smoker” vent hosting chemosynthetic life and a dormant vent covered mostly in white bacterial mats.

Leg 1 Co-Chief Scientist (and former Grays Harbor College Prof) Julie Nelson helps VISIONS’22 students from UW run chemical analyses on the verification water samples collected at the Axial Base site.