From most sites we recovered excellently preserved coral, including abundant porites, acropora and favid corals. Unexpectedly, the oldest and deepest sites generally gave the best results, including more coral samples with less alteration. The new, near-bottom DSL120 worked very well for sidescan images, in spite of initial difficulties. We covered most of the platforms with DSL120, allowing us to focus on the most promising dive sites at the platform edges. The seabeam and DSL120 surveys showed that pinnacle reefs leave subduction tracks in the steep walls of the upper plate of the collision zone, as the tracks are about the size of these pinnacles and they are oriented in the direction of plate motion.
Organisms living on the fossil carbonate platforms are diverse and vary significantly with depth.
The captain and crew of the Melville have been outstanding. The last cruise of Jason has been an unqualified success and we look forward to the new era of the J2. This cruise is being funded from a grant from the National Science Foundation. This will allow the exploration of ocean carbon dynamics in remote places and hard to sample seasons. Another SOLO was deployed last week in the California Current near Point Conception to test a simple remedy for biofouling.