Exploring the Graveyard: Windows to the Deep 2018

Sometimes you go looking for what you think might be a shipwreck and instead you find...something else.

On June 24, 2018, during the Windows to the Deep 2018 expedition, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer mapped the seafloor offshore North Carolina near the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, locating a sonar anomaly that had the potential to be a shipwreck. On June 27, the team returned to the area to determine what the "Big Dipper" anomaly actually is by conducting a visual survey using remotely operated vehicles (ROV) Deep Discoverer and Seirios.

As the ROVs approached the target, the ship and shore-based science team anticipated the opportunity to find an important part of maritime cultural history; however, instead of a shipwreck, the team found an area of broken rock slabs that was home to a diversity of organisms. Nearly every nook and cranny of habitat surveyed was home to fish and the surfaces of rocks were often covered in anemones or coral.

In June, we'll conduct the Windows to the Deep 2019, once again exploring off the southeast Atlantic coast. We've got a few potential shipwreck dive targets...but we'll all have to wait and see what we really discover!

Learn more here: https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1806/logs/june28/june28.html

For more from the Windows to the Deep 2018 expedition, visit:https://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/ex1806/welcome.html

Video courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Windows to the Deep 2018.

Видео Exploring the Graveyard: Windows to the Deep 2018 канала oceanexplorergov