Yes, you guessed it! It’s time for another DEEPEND cruise in the Gulf of Mexico! Vans are loaded and being driven to Gulfport, MS, gear is packed. scientists are scrambling to make sure we have everything we need, and everyone is traveling in the next day or two to arrive in Gulfport for another successful adventure.
Our current plan includes loading all the gear onto the R/V Point Sur on Monday and depart from Gulfport, MS at midnight. We will be heading to our usual stations for collecting samples from 0-1500 m deep using the MOC10 net system once again. This will be our 9th DEEPEND cruise and the 3rd as part of the NOAA RESTORE program which concludes next year. We are very excited to keep this long-term survey going as we still know so very little about the deep ocean we are exploring.
We will be posting blogs along our journey once we get underway so stay tuned!