WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:00.140 --> 00:00:02.320 Good afternoon and good morning everyone. 00:00:02.320 --> 00:00:04.410 I'm Brian Kennedy, live from the NOAA Ship 00:00:04.410 --> 00:00:07.680 Okeanos Explorer in the Gulf of Mexico and I'm joined on my left by: 00:00:07.680 --> 00:00:11.920 My name is Diva Amon and I am one of the biology leads aboard this expedition 00:00:11.929 --> 00:00:13.340 And Alex? 00:00:13.340 --> 00:00:16.949 I'm Alex Avila. I am a Dr. Nancy Foster Scholar, which is 00:00:16.949 --> 00:00:20.900 sponsored by the Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, as well as an Oregon Sea Grant Fellow. 00:00:20.900 --> 00:00:23.939 Well thank you all for joining us. We'll spend the next 30 minutes here on 00:00:23.939 --> 00:00:27.720 Facebook Live answering your questions and talking a little bit of our current 00:00:27.720 --> 00:00:31.619 expeditions in the Gulf of Mexico. We've been underway for about fourteen 00:00:31.619 --> 00:00:35.969 days now. We've dove most days. We did have a couple of days of really bad 00:00:35.969 --> 00:00:39.800 weather that made us all appreciate the invention of seasickness medication. 00:00:39.800 --> 00:00:44.579 It was blowing about 40 knots and we had between 12 and 14 foot seas on and off 00:00:44.579 --> 00:00:48.300 for about three days so we certainly couldn't use our remotely operated 00:00:48.300 --> 00:00:53.460 vehicle and it was even some days there was too much choppiness in the water 00:00:53.460 --> 00:00:57.220 column to to even do any good sonar. 00:00:57.220 --> 00:01:00.510 So please put your questions in to Facebook 00:01:00.510 --> 00:01:03.840 and pass them on to us and we'll be taking them now. 00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:04.739 Diva, do you want to give us 00:01:04.739 --> 00:01:07.260 a little update on what we've seen so far and what we're seeing today? 00:01:07.260 --> 00:01:07.770 Yeah so 00:01:07.770 --> 00:01:11.430 this has been an amazing expedition. It's the first time the Okeanos Explorer has 00:01:11.430 --> 00:01:15.570 been back in the Gulf of Mexico in three years so it's it's really great to be 00:01:15.570 --> 00:01:20.909 back but so far we've explored deep-sea coral gardens as well as a shipwreck 00:01:20.909 --> 00:01:24.119 which was absolutely phenomenal and then yesterday's dive and today's dive have 00:01:24.119 --> 00:01:28.530 been particularly amazing yesterday we had huge deep-sea corals oh you know 00:01:28.530 --> 00:01:33.689 nearly ten feet in width in some places as well as asphalt seeps and cold seeps 00:01:33.689 --> 00:01:37.619 and today we've just found these never-before-seen cold seep habitats 00:01:37.620 --> 00:01:43.560 we had no idea existed until today. Huge mussel beds, huge brine lakes, you know a 00:01:43.560 --> 00:01:47.180 lake at the bottom of the sea. It just it's been an amazing dive so far today. 00:01:47.189 --> 00:01:47.940 Alex? 00:01:47.940 --> 00:01:51.570 Oh my gosh yes I've loved I've never seen these seeps before, never seen a 00:01:51.570 --> 00:01:55.799 brine pool before. Very exciting, learning so much from being on the ship, actually 00:01:55.799 --> 00:01:58.560 from all the biologists in the chat, from all the scientists here on board, 00:01:58.560 --> 00:02:02.610 definitely loving every moment here. This cool chimera we saw earlier today was 00:02:02.610 --> 00:02:07.480 awesome surprise and just all these looking cool fish things we see on the bottom. 00:02:07.480 --> 00:02:09.280 Absolutely and one of the things we're just 00:02:09.280 --> 00:02:13.780 seeing now is some methane hydrate which is [gasps] pretty unusual. 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:17.670 So methane hydrate is a really interesting thing you only see in the 00:02:17.670 --> 00:02:21.600 deep-sea where when methane interacts with salt water it forms what's 00:02:21.600 --> 00:02:25.320 known as a clathrate and it actually turns into an ice. Diva can you elaborate a little? 00:02:25.320 --> 00:02:29.300 So it has to happen in really specific pressure and temperature 00:02:29.310 --> 00:02:33.210 conditions which are obviously being met here and as a result it looks like this 00:02:33.210 --> 00:02:38.130 kind of snow cone that it that traps underneath overhangs which is exactly 00:02:38.130 --> 00:02:42.840 what we're seeing on our live feed right now and it is a source of these amazing 00:02:42.840 --> 00:02:46.740 chemicals which many of the animals in this areas, these chemosynthetic habitats, 00:02:46.740 --> 00:02:51.660 use sometimes you can even find ice worms living on these methane seeps. 00:02:51.660 --> 00:02:56.480 Hesiocaeca methanicola and they are found only on methane hydrates. 00:02:56.490 --> 00:02:59.640 We've got our first questions coming in from our Facebook viewers 00:02:59.640 --> 00:03:02.910 Tristan O'Malley asked: the other day when you were exploring a shipwreck I 00:03:02.910 --> 00:03:06.630 didn't see you collect anything there. Are you not allowed to collect artifacts 00:03:06.630 --> 00:03:08.340 from ships and why is that? 00:03:08.340 --> 00:03:10.260 Deva? I feel like that's a Brian question. 00:03:10.260 --> 00:03:11.140 Okay well I'll take that one. 00:03:11.140 --> 00:03:13.160 I'm about to give myself the first question. 00:03:13.200 --> 00:03:19.340 So on the Okeanos Explorer we collect, we do what's known as non-disturbance archaeology. 00:03:19.350 --> 00:03:20.960 We don't actually collect anything. 00:03:20.960 --> 00:03:24.120 We treat these sites as potential graves 00:03:24.120 --> 00:03:28.890 and with a great deal of respect so we just image and document what we see and 00:03:28.890 --> 00:03:32.910 we don't actually collect anything and we leave the preservation on the 00:03:32.910 --> 00:03:37.320 seafloor to preserve these artifacts for later researchers and people to come 00:03:37.320 --> 00:03:40.830 back and we try and use our high-resolution video imagery and this 00:03:40.830 --> 00:03:44.820 crew, we're even experimenting with a 3D mosaic that the Bureau of Ocean Energy 00:03:44.820 --> 00:03:49.770 Management has been doing producing from our video to allow people on shore to 00:03:49.770 --> 00:03:53.930 experience these historical sites in their pristine nature. 00:03:53.930 --> 00:03:55.340 And I must say 00:03:55.350 --> 00:03:59.780 that mosaic looks amazing. It's like you're walking around that shipwreck. 00:03:59.790 --> 00:04:03.240 Yeah so that's not been posted yet, but we certainly will get it up there once 00:04:03.240 --> 00:04:07.080 we we get past some of the beta testing on it and get it up on the website so 00:04:07.080 --> 00:04:08.220 you all can see that. 00:04:08.220 --> 00:04:12.510 Victoria Gill is interested in what was the hermit crab, 00:04:12.510 --> 00:04:16.470 excuse me, what was the hermit crab encased in a couple days ago when you 00:04:16.470 --> 00:04:17.680 were diving again? 00:04:17.680 --> 00:04:21.260 So I think she may be referring to the anemone? 00:04:21.260 --> 00:04:22.590 So we've quite 00:04:22.590 --> 00:04:25.660 a couple times during this expedition well as in the Pacific we've seen some 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:29.440 hermit crabs that instead of having shells they actually just have anemones 00:04:29.440 --> 00:04:33.430 so at one point they would have had a small shell and those shells eventually 00:04:33.430 --> 00:04:37.900 dissolve. An anemone will, well the anenome lives on the shell and then the 00:04:37.900 --> 00:04:41.560 shell dissolves. So it's left with just this anemone and inside of the anenome 00:04:41.560 --> 00:04:47.200 will actually become curved to fit around the the tail of that hermit crab 00:04:47.200 --> 00:04:53.350 which is very almost spiral, so they have a perfect you know union in the 00:04:53.350 --> 00:04:54.320 anemones base. 00:04:54.320 --> 00:04:56.440 Yeah those things are always fascinating to see, like the 00:04:56.440 --> 00:04:59.440 decorator crabs: what different things are wearing different animals and 00:04:59.440 --> 00:05:00.820 that symbiotic relationship. 00:05:00.820 --> 00:05:05.470 So well next question. Donna Lynch asked do you 00:05:05.470 --> 00:05:07.020 expect or have you seen any sharks? 00:05:07.020 --> 00:05:09.620 I guess Alex being our fisheries biologist, do you want to take that one? 00:05:09.620 --> 00:05:12.190 Well, chimeras are kind of closely 00:05:12.190 --> 00:05:16.570 related to sharks, they're the closest ones actually, so in a way we have seen 00:05:16.570 --> 00:05:20.980 something like a shark. We haven't seen any other types yet but probably 00:05:20.980 --> 00:05:25.760 either in the water column either on our way up or down we could probably see some 00:05:25.760 --> 00:05:28.860 There are some deep-sea sharks but we haven't seen them yet. 00:05:28.870 --> 00:05:32.200 But it'd be really cool if we could get to see some, that would be really exciting. 00:05:32.200 --> 00:05:35.080 Yeah I haven't seen a deep-sea ones, but I think during recovery on dive 2 or 00:05:35.080 --> 00:05:38.740 dive 3 we saw either a mako or a white tip I couldn't quite tell exactly, it 00:05:38.740 --> 00:05:41.260 stayed pretty far away while the ROV was being recovered. 00:05:41.260 --> 00:05:43.160 You could just see it hovering under the surface. 00:05:43.160 --> 00:05:46.460 So we do see deep-sea sharks not uncommonly, 00:05:46.460 --> 00:05:51.640 sixgills, Greenland sharks, things like that so hopefully fingers crossed we'll 00:05:51.640 --> 00:05:54.060 still encounter a few of those on this expedition.