Deepwater Coral and Golden Crab Habitats

By Anonymous

NOAA ship ‘Nancy Foster’ conducted a cruise off Florida’s east coast from June 1 through June 10 to map the ocean floor in Habitat Areas of Particular Concern for the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC). This mission is a ‘cobbling together’ of the resources of many to provide data for the Council’s needs. The ship is providing support to NOAA’s Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary, National Ocean Service, to meet regional science needs to the SAFMC to help map deepwater coral and golden crab habitats. The National Undersea Research Center (NURC) at UNC-Wilmington offered up the use of its National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology’s (NIUST) Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) to map specific areas of interest in depths of 250-850 meters. After the ship acquires 100% bottom insonification of the sea floor using a Multibeam echo sounder EM 1002, the AUVs EM 2000 maps these defined areas with high resolution. The AUV acquires data at speeds reaching 4 knots for up to 30 hours. The synergistic fashion in which this mission is being conducted meets many of the needs of individual programs that might have alone used the platform for a single purpose. ‘Nancy Foster’ is the first NOAA ship to test and successfully operate an AUV of this magnitude for this type of mission.

Copyright Technology Systems Corporation Oct/Nov 2007

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