Harii Lab's blog: News from the Cruise Day 4

Today the sea was very calm and we could make the first dive of the cruise. The target was a very old (over 40 millions years old) underwater volcano (since long time extinct) named Canopus seamount. Malcom, our colleague form NIWA had the privilege to be the scientist on board of the submersible. It was his first dive and it is good that he is a really experimented scientist, because there was a lot of pressure on his shoulder to make everybody onboard happy. But he managed very well and now everybody is busy, and likely will be busy until late at night.
It was the first time we could get images from this volcano. We were surprised how rare are the animals, but still we could see several corals, sponges, shrimps and fishes. even an octopus came swimming in front of the shinkai to see what was this big thing full of lights disturbing the quiet environment of the deep-sea. I was happy because we found the animals on which the zoanthids I am interested are living, but unfortunately there were no zoanthids. Maybe we will find some in some of the next dives… However, I still have full hands with several sediments cores that have been collected.
Tomorrow we will leave deep seamount and cross the Kermadec Trench to go explore some active volcanic area to try to find some hydrothermal vents. This will be exciting because nobody saw those vents, we only know they are here because scientists found some specific chemicals in the water in the area a few years ago. I don't know what we will find, but whatever we will see it will be exciting to see for the first time what is going on down there. After that, the day after tomorrow, the weather looks not so good and we are worried if we can dive again (normally we planned to do 5 dives during this cruise).