The main geographical target areas are:
- Mid-oceanic ridges
- Continental margins
What are the scientific topics?
- Understand the processes of ocean permafrost melting and greenhouse gas release, ice-free Arctic Ocean and water-mass cascading and ocean climate change, environment and food chains.
- Polar Ocean climate processes of global importance
- Explore the genetic resources e.g. caused by extreme environmental conditions such as high pressure and temperature.
- Measure seismic activity in the deep sea to understand earthquake. In combination with pressure sensors this will also enable detection and warning of tsunamis.
- Distributed and continuous observations of climate and biological resources in the water column to improve the monitoring of climate and marine resources.
- Enable experiments at the seabed to understand the biological response to environmental disturbance including acidification due to increased levels of CO2.
Access to large quantities of real-time observation from the deep sea, including high definition video, can be used to provide the public and future recruits to science a fascinating insight into an almost unexplored part of the earth.
