My name is Brandyn Lucca and I am a PhD student at Stony Brook University. I am primarily focused on how sound bounces off of different types of animals, which is important for converting acoustic backscatter measured by scientific echosounders into estimates of abundance and biomass. Likewise, understanding their acoustic signatures/fingerprints allows us to classify aggregations and schools we observe from the acoustic backscatter data.

Hello from the R/V Endeavor! My name is Stephen Ell, I am going into my junior year studying ocean engineering at the University of New Hampshire. I am a part of the ocean lander retrieval, maintenance, and deployment team working alongside our JASCO technician.

I am aboard this vessel as a representative of a related National Oceanographic Partnership Program project called DEEP SEARCH (DEEP Sea Exploration to Advance Research on Coral/Canyon/Cold seep Habitats program). The focus of which is to improve our understanding of the distribution of these ecosystems to properly manage them.

Hey everyone! My name is Pete Larios and I am a volunteer on the ADEON cruise as well as a recent graduate of Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences. Right now we are about a one day steam from our first station off the coast of Florida and making about 11 knots. The seas are pretty calm, about 3 to 5 feet, with the forecast predicting even calmer weather through the middle of the week.

My name is Madison Alstede. I’m originally from West Springfield, MA and I’m currently going into my senior year at the University of New Hampshire studying Earth Sciences with a concentration in Oceanography. I’m very excited to be joining the ADEON crew on this leg of their cruise and broadening my oceanographic experience.

One of the more interesting occurrences along the transit was passing over the Puerto Rico trench, which contains the deepest point in the Atlantic Ocean. The idea that we were passing over water more than 8,000 meters deep was definitely a thrill!

Hi, my name is Jenn Conyers. I’m an undergraduate ocean engineering student at UNH from Franklin, MA. I’m here helping the research team, which should be very interesting because I’ve never spent more than an afternoon out at sea. Living on a boat is a very strange but exciting at the same time. The boat is constantly rocking back and forth which can make it difficult to walk down hallways but is nice when you are trying to fall asleep. This afternoon some of the scientists lost the battle to the drowsiness side effect of the sea sickness medicine and had to take a quick recovery nap.

My name is Cassie Fries, and we just left port on the RV Endeavor, cruise EN615. Currently, you can still see a faint outline of San Juan, and this will be the last time we see land for the next three weeks. It's super important for us to make sure everything is tied down before we set sail so that nothing moves even if we hit rough seas. Lots of knot tying is involved, and I got lucky enough to learn a new knot. With all the equipment we have, having it secured is the most important thing.

Preparations for ADEON Cruise 2 are in full swing. In December of 2017, ADEON Cruise 1 deployed 7 ocean bottom landers off the Outer Continental Shelf from Florida up to Virginia. Our goal for this cruise is to retrieve all 7 landers, download data, and redeploy; conduct fine-scale acoustic surveys and net tows, and collect all the necessary metadata to fully interpret both the vessel and lander acoustic time series.