Plattform Platform	Reise-Nr. Cruise-No.	Zeitraum Period	Projekt Project	Arbeitsgebiet Working area
Sonne	SO237	14.12.2014 - 26.01.2015		Caribbean Sea North Atlantic Ocean

Fahrtleiter Chief Scientist	Institut Institute	Auslaufhafen Port of departure	Einlaufhafen Port of return	Stationskarte Station map	Schiffsroute Trackchart
Devey Collin W.	Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR)	Las Palmas	Santo Domingo

Ziel der Reise / Objectives of Cruise:

The abyssal seafloor makes up > 60% of our planet's surface, it is nevertheless largely unexplored. We know very little about how the processes which created it have varied through time, about life on the deep seafloor or about how the hydrosphere, biosphere and lithosphere interact over this vast area. In the Atlantic, transform faults and fracture zones characterize most of the seafloor bathymetry and the volcanic and tectonic process which create and modify the crust can be deduced from their bathymetric signature. During the cruise SO-237 we surveyed and sampled the entire length of one of the major offsets of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Vema Fracture Zone, looking at a history of plate creation and modification over 120Ma. Variations in benthic communities along this transect will be investigated using samples recovered from corers and towed gear as well as detailed photographic mapping of the benthic megafauna using AUV. The results will be used to test the hypothesis that the Mid-Atlantic Ridge serves as a barrier limiting benthic species distribution in the abyssal basins on both sides of the ridge. The Puerto Rico Trench is much deeper than the surrounding abyssal West Atlantic and so we also took samples there to determine whether the biodiversity of its hadal meio-, macro-, and megabenthic fauna differs from that of the abyssal Atlantic due to isolation of the trench. The cruise yielded important information for the Transregio proposal "Maturing oceanic plates: Earth's hidden reactors" and has provided the first high-resolution bathymetric survey along an entire fracture zone trace and one of the world's best surveyed seafloor features.

Messungen / Measurements