AUVAC

Exploring the Mid Ocean Ridge and Seamounts with the Autonomous Benthic Explorer, 1995-2008

August 23, 2009 via – AUSI

Since 1994, we have used The Autonomous Benthic Explorer, ABE, for scientific exploration of the Mid-Ocean Ridge and seamounts. ABE has been used on 19 cruises around the world with dives covering over 3600 km of tracklines at an average depth of more than 2000 meters. Notable accomplishments for ABE include the first use of AUVs for seafloor magnetics, the first AUV near bottom bathymetric survey of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, the first systematic discoveries of hydrothermal vent sites by an AUV (Eastern Lau Spreading Center), and the first discoveries of active hydrothermal vent sites by any method on the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge and the Southwest Indian Ridge. Other notable surveys include bathymetric surveys of the Lost City hydrothermal site on the Atlantis Massif and the Endeavour segment of the Juan de Fuca Ridge, photo surveys for deep corals on the New England Seamounts and seamounts off Tasmania, and a bathymetric and magnetic survey of Brothers volcano, a seamount on the Kermadec Arc north of New Zealand. In most of these operations, we worked closely with other complementary systems such as the human-occupied submersible Alvin, Jason ROV, the Canadian Ropos ROV, the German Marum and Geomar ROVs, the WHOI Tow Cam, the DSL-120 towed sidescan, tow sleds from China, and the UK Tobi system [Yoerger 2007].