The Ocean Exploration Trust has announced its plans for the 2023 expedition season aboard Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus. The expedition will include ten separate trips over eight months to explore deep-sea habitats in the Central and Eastern Pacific, using emerging technologies in at-sea operations. E/V Nautilus will cover thousands of miles of open ocean, from Hawaiʻi and the US Pacific Remote Islands up to British Columbia and back. The 2023 Nautilus expeditions are sponsored by NOAA Ocean Exploration, with additional support from various organizations.
Allison Fundis, OET COO, said, “Our collaborators and partners are essential to our program as we work to operationalize new technologies that advance the field of ocean exploration, bring the deep sea to classrooms and homes around the globe, and most importantly as we work to conduct ocean exploration expeditions in more ethical and equitable ways.”
Scientists, students, educators, and the public can participate remotely from shore through telepresence-enabled expeditions, connecting with personnel aboard E/V Nautilus via high-speed satellite-connected streaming. Nautilus’s 2023 expeditions will focus on exploring the geological history of seamounts in the Pacific, deep-sea coral and sponge gardens, and marine protected areas, as well as integrating cutting-edge technologies into at-sea operations.
The 2023 E/V Nautilus expeditions are primarily supported by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, a consortium that brings together the scientific expertise and ocean exploration technologies from multiple institutions. The expeditions will support various environmental initiatives and provide education resources for K-12 learners in English and Spanish. The public can follow the expeditions on NautilusLive.org, a 24-hour portal offering live-streamed video, behind-the-scenes updates on social media, and educational Q&A interactions from the onboard broadcast studio.
As E/V Nautilus conducts its work in the Pacific, we want to acknowledge and pay tribute to the indigenous and local communities of Oceania. These communities include Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Papuans, and other Pasifika peoples. They have been the stewards of the ocean, seas, coastlines, and lands of the Pacific Ocean for generations. We recognize and respect the deep and enduring relationships that exist between these peoples, the ocean, and the environment. The Ocean Exploration Trust is committed to working with these local communities by co-developing expedition plans, making data publicly accessible, and coordinating outreach with schools and community groups. We welcome any inquiries about collaborative partnerships at info@oet.org.
The expeditions are explicitly tailored to meet the requirements of the science and resource management communities to fill in the gaps in knowledge. The mapping and ROV operations are primarily focused on exploring areas that have not been charted before, which is a direct contribution to the US National Strategy for Ocean Mapping, Exploration, and Characterization, Seabed 2030, and the UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development. By integrating multiple autonomous vehicles onto the E/V Nautilus, they can significantly advance the achievement of national and international objectives for exploring the ocean with multiple vehicles.