VIMS researchers have departed for a 6-week expedition to the deep waters of the North Atlantic as part of the Census of Marine Life, a global, 10-year study of the diversity, distribution, and abundance of life in the oceans.
Aboard the 208-foot NOAA Fisheries vessel Henry B. Bigelow are professors Mike Vecchione and Tracey Sutton, along with graduate student C.J. Sweetman. They join a team of scientists from around the nation and world.
The overall goal of the expedition is to further explore the deep-water ecosystems of the northern mid-Atlantic Ridge, an area last visited by Vecchione and Sutton in 2004 as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystem Project (MAR-ECO). Like other parts of the deep ocean, the waters above the mid-Atlantic ridge are poorly known. "The realm below 3,000 feet makes up more than 90% of the biosphere, but it’s the part of the Earth that we know the least about," says Vecchione.