Nautilus LIVE: Explore the Ocean with the E/V Nautilus!

The Grays Harbor Marine Resources Committee would like to invite the GHC community, including faculty, staff and students to attend the Nautilus LIVE event.

Did you know we have a research vessel exploring the sea floor right off our coast in the Quinault Canyon?

Ever wonder what's down there?
Ever wonder how to pilot a remote operated submarine?
Ever wonder what impacts the ocean deeps have on your land?

This is your opportunity to ask questions of the Corps of Exploration, live from the ship at sea. A two-way communication link will be set up for anyone to ask questions in real-time with scientists, engineers and educators onboard the E/V Nautilus. This is a unique opportunity for those curious about the ocean of our shores.

This event will be held at GHC in 4134B at 10 am on Monday, August 28th. We will be serving refreshments including coffee, juice and fruit for this morning event.

About the 2017 Nautilus Expedition

The Ocean Exploration Trust was founded in 2008 by Dr. Robert Ballard—best known for his discovery of RMS Titanic’s final resting place and as a National Geographic Explorer in Residence—to engage in pure ocean exploration. Our international programs center on scientific exploration of the seafloor with expeditions launched from Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus, a 64-meter research vessel operated by the Ocean Exploration Trust. In addition to conducting scientific research, we offer our expeditions to explorers on shore via live video, audio, and data feeds from the field. We also bring educators and students aboard during E/V Nautilus expeditions, offering them hands-on experience in ocean exploration, research, and communications.

The 2017 Nautilus Expedition will launch the third year of exploration in the Eastern Pacific Ocean, and will be one of the most extensive seasons to date. From May to November, Nautilus will document and survey unexplored regions from British Columbia, Canada, along the West Coast of the United States, to Baja California, Mexico.

Quinault Canyon & Olympic Coast NMS 

Returning to the Pacific Northwest, Nautilus has launched an expedition with dual objectives in Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary, covering 3,189 mi2 of coastal and offshore waters along one of the least developed coastlines of the continental US. Though mapping efforts have helped to characterize seafloor substrates in some portions of the sanctuary, only very small portions of the sanctuary have been visited or photographed. Quinault and Quileute Canyons have never been explored by ROV or AUV, but are areas of high interest to expedition scientists from NOAA's Northwest Fisheries Science Center and Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary as well as to the Quinault Indian Nation and Quileute Tribe, two of the four native American tribes that have protected treaty rights to marine resources in this region.

Overall, the objectives are to explore and characterize seafloor resources and features of the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary that are associated with three prominent submarine canyons: Quinault Canyon, Quileute Canyon, and Juan de Fuca Canyon. Resources to be explored through AUV and ROV deployment include biogenic, habitat-forming (deep sea coral and sponge) benthic communities and associated species, and possibly methane seeps, hundreds of which were found along the Washington and Oregon shelf break during the 2016 Nautilus expedition. This expedition may also visit and document the wreck of submarine USS Bugara, a maritime heritage site, and conduct multibeam mapping of various priority areas that were identified through a collaborative spatial prioritization process involving more than 15 partner agencies.

The Olympic Coast is also notable as the northern reach of the California Current ecosystem, where deep oceanic water is seasonally upwelled onto the shelf, bringing nutrient-rich, waters nearshore.  This process supports the region’s highly productive ecosystem, but due to ocean acidification, is increasingly delivering corrosive low-pH, and often hypoxic, waters onto the shelf that produce detrimental effects to organisms, including ecologically, culturally, and commercially important species. This expedition will be conducted near the end of the upwelling season and will involve collection of biological and deep water samples with the ROV, push cores of the seafloor as a historical record of OA exposure, and plankton samples from shelf break locations near the canyon rims. As an ocean acidification (OA) sentinel site, the Olympic Coast region is focused on understanding the physical, chemical and biological impacts from OA as well as piloting management approaches for monitoring and addressing OA impacts.