Monkfish Sits on Geometric Columnar Basalt
ROV Hercules captured this footage of stunning deep sea columnar basalt while diving on ancient volcanos around 1,700 meters deep in a canyon North of Molokai. Basalt is an igneous rock that, as lava, cools in a particular way that creates these unique hexagonal columns. Keep watching, and you’ll even glimpse a monkfish (also known as a goosefish) sitting on these geological wonders. These anglerfishes in the family Lophiidae are always crowd-pleasers due to their “grumpy” looking facial expressions.
The Hawaiian Islands are part of the oldest, longest, and most remote island chains on Earth, and have been a key natural laboratory for many important scientific discoveries. This 14-day telepresence-enabled expedition (NA156) is conducting ROV surveys across some of the most dramatic deep-sea habitats surrounding the Main Hawaiian Islands, and testing a new wide-field camera array system across a wide range of complex topographical features.
Learn more about this expedition funded by the Office of Naval Research.
Ocean Exploration through Advanced Imaging
In October, we return to ROV dives continuing our work to advance technology use in the deep sea. Experimenting with deploying a new camera technology, we will explore using a new wide-field camera array on ROV Hercules to capture three-dimensional stereoscopic imagery from the seabed.
