Deep Sea Benefits Project and DSB2 Cruise

DEEPEND has been funded by a separate NOAA project called Deep-Sea Benefits. The Deep-Sea Benefits project will use monitoring to gather information that will increase our understanding of ecological interactions among fish and water column invertebrates, sea turtles, marine mammals, and mesophotic and deep benthic communities. This information can be used to design restoration actions and calculate the benefits from other restoration activities. For example, the information collected by Deep-Sea Benefits will be incorporated into the Active Management and Protection project activities, including informing other agencies responsible for protecting Gulf benthic habitat and resources about these protections. It will also help protect mesopelagic fish and invertebrate communities situated in the water column above them, thus contributing to protecting water column productivity—which helps support sea turtles, marine mammals, and mesophotic and deep benthic community productivity. These protections would also lead to conservation of the biodiversity inherent to these locations. The Deep-Sea Benefits project is layered—both figuratively and literally—on top of other restoration actions being taken to help restore for the injuries from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. (Above excerpt and image below taken from DSB1 cruise blog by Ian Zink).

DEEPEND is currently at sea for the second Deep-Sea Benefits cruise from August 19-September 1, 2025. We will continue surveying the slope in three different areas of the northern Gulf and recording acoustic data throughout. This second cruise will incorporate two new technologies including a benthic lander and a high throughput environmental DNA (eDNA) sampler. The benthic lander will be outfitted with acoustic sensors, environmental sensors, and a camera to record images and videos. You can learn a lot more about the benthic lander on our cruise blog here. The eDNA sampler will be used to collect DNA from the environment that can then be barcoded to inform us about what species have been in the area. This information will be compared with what we collect in the trawl and data we collect with our shipboard acoustic transducers. An upcoming cruise blog will go into more detail about the eDNA sampler soon so be sure to visit our cruise blog page and subscribe!