Ascension Island: Pristine Seas Heads to the Mountains! – National Geographic

Photo courtesy Ascension Island Government

Of course, this being Pristine Seas, these mountains are in the deep seabut mountains they are.

We are headed to Ascension Island, a tiny volcanic island in the South Atlantic, midway between Brazil and Africa. Its a powerful place where the deep sea and remote mountains collide, leaving the island as the small visible tip of a massive 10,500-foot (3,200-meter) mountain. The underwater mountain range Ascension Island sits on is the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, itself part of the longest mountain range in the world!

To study this challenging region the Pristine Seas team have joined forces with the British Antarctic Survey and the Ascension Island Government aboard the Antarctic science support vessel the RRS James Clark Ross. The team will sail 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) from Recife, Brazil to Ascension Island where they will complete a comprehensive science survey of the deep ocean surrounding the island including itsisolated biodiversity hotspots, the seamounts.

The water is too deep for diving, even for the Pristine Seas divers! So the team will be using their drop-cameras and pelagic cameras (whichhover in the water column)along with a full range of remote-sensing equipment including scientific trawls, plankton nets, acoustic arrays, CTD devices (to measureconductivity, temperature, and depth), lander cameras, and Swath bathymetry to accurately map the seabed and seamounts.

Well be posting our progress and discoveries here throughout the expeditionso please check in regularly and join us at sea!

Read all Ascension Island 2017 posts.

This expedition is a collaboration among the Ascension Island Government, National Geographic Pristine Seas, the British Antarctic Survey, and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds

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Ascension Island: Pristine Seas Heads to the Mountains! - National Geographic