Legacy: Gulf of Mexico Expedition 2010

The Oceana Latitude is now docked in St. Petersburg for the next few days.  I’ve reboarded the Oceana Latitude with 2 scientists from the National Aquarium, Andy Dehart and Andrew Pulver. We’ll be using 2 of the Latitude’s tenders, the longitude and the Lat-long, to do shark research day trips. The research will include collecting … Read more

The Oceana Latitude is now headed South, down the west coast of Florida. While the ship is docked in St. Petersburg for the next few days, scientists from Oceana and the National Aquarium, including Discovery Channel shark advisor Andy Dehart, will work to tag various shark species several miles offshore. In addition to collecting basic … Read more

It was another day of diving for the crew onboard the Oceana Latitude. Today’s site was nearly 15 miles from Port St. Joe and is home to Sherman Tug, a vessel that was sunk in 1996 and now sits upright 75-feet underwater. This sunken ship is covered in gorgonians and sponges and inhabited by schools … Read more

Under typical weather conditions, it should have taken the divers only an hour and a half to reach the 3-5’s area on the 42-foot Oceana Longitude this morning. But because of rough seas, the divers decided to divert from the course when they realized that it would take nearly twice as long to reach the … Read more

On Wednesday morning the Oceana Latitude pulled up anchor and started to make its way to Port St. Joe, Fla. As we left Mobile Bay, we passed Dauphin Island, home of the Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo. Oceana has participated in this conservation minded fishing tournament in the past, which typically attracts more than 100,000 spectators … Read more

In an unexpected turn of events, the generator used to power Oceana’s ROV was hit by a large rogue wave Monday afternoon near the edge of DeSoto Canyon. While the ROV technicians spent the rest of the day trying to repair the damaged system, the Oceana Latitude began to adjust course and head towards Mobile … Read more

After making several transects of the Alabama Alps today and comparing Oceana’s observations with those from previous scientific investigations, we believe to have a fairly good snapshot of the area. Based on what we saw from the ROV footage and CTD scans, there are no obvious signs that this area was harmed by the recent Deepwater … Read more

The heat and humidity did not divert the Oceana crew from the important task at hand today. After running a few more quick tests on the Spanish ROV, the crew sent it down for its first operation. Positioned near the “Alabama Alps,” the ROV was lowered nearly 250 feet to the ocean floor. As strong … Read more

From the surface of the water, it’s hard to imagine that a small underwater mountain range with pinnacles reaching as high as 1000 meters above the seafloor is below us. With the help of an echo sounder and Olex seafloor mapping software, Oceana’s experts were able to create a visual image of a section of “The … Read more

As Will and the rest of our Alaskan colleagues headed back to Juneau this week, a new crew was making its way to Gulfport to board the Oceana Latitude. The next mission: Documenting seafloor habitat areas along the continental shelf of the Gulf of Mexico that may have been harmed by underwater oil. During this … Read more