Description: Integrated Ocean Drilling Program Expedition 320/321, "Pacific Equatorial Age Transect" (Sites U1331–U1338), was designed to recover a continuous Cenozoic record of the equatorial Pacific by coring above the paleoposition of the Equator at successive crustal ages on the Pacific plate. These sediments record the evolution of the equatorial climate system throughout the Cenozoic. As we gained more information about the past movement of plates and when in Earth's history "critical" climate events took place, it became possible to drill an age transect ("flow-line") along the position of the paleoequator in the Pacific, targeting important time slices where the sedimentary archive allows us to reconstruct past climatic and tectonic conditions. The Pacific Equatorial Age Transect (PEAT) program cored eight sites from the sediment surface to basement, with basalt aged between 53 and 18 Ma, covering the time period following maximum Cenozoic warmth, through initial major glaciations, to today. The PEAT program allows the reconstruction of extreme changes of the calcium carbonate compensation depth (CCD) across major geological boundaries during the last 53 m.y. A very shallow CCD during most of the Paleogene makes it difficult to obtain well-preserved carbonate sediments during these stratigraphic intervals, but Expedition 320 recovered a unique sedimentary biogenic sediment archive for time periods just after the Paleocene/Eocene boundary event, the Eocene cooling, the Eocene–Oligocene transition, the "one cold pole" Oligocene, the Oligocene–Miocene transition, and the middle Miocene cooling. Expedition 321, the second part of the PEAT program, recovered sediments from the time period roughly from 25 Ma forward, including sediments crossing the Oligocene/Miocene boundary and two major Neogene equatorial Pacific sediment sections. Together with older Deep Sea Drilling Project and Ocean Drilling Program drilling in the equatorial Pacific, we can delineate the position of the paleoequator and variations in sediment thickness from ~150°W to 110°W longitude.

Description: Cruise SO210 with RV SONNE to the active continental margin off Chile was conducted by shiptime exchange with RV METEOR. Funds for mobilizing the research team were provided by the German Science Foundation (DFG) in conjunction with the Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 574 of the University of Kiel. In the first years, the SFB 574 investigated the pathways and fluxes of volatiles through the erosive subduction zone off Central America. For comparison, the studies were extended to the accretionary margin off Central Chile. Cruise SO210 is the last cruise conducted in the framework of SFB 574 and based on investigations of previous SFB-cruises on the RVs VIDAL GORMAZ and JAMES COOK. The first leg of cruise SO210 was dedicated to long gravity coring for volcanic ash layers from the erruptive Southern Volcanic Zone (SVZ) of the Andes that were either deposited as fallouts onto the incoming Nazca Plate or transported down the slope and across the Chile Trench. Eight gravity cores of 12 m length were retrieved seaward of the Chile Channel on the outer rise of the Nazca Plate. The second goal for coring was the description and dating of previously mapped submarine landslides as well as retrieval of slide-related material for geo-technical experiments. As the deployment frame for long coring had to be removed on the second leg we continued coring for mass-wasting and geochemistry with short cores. Ten gravity cores of 3 or 6 m barrel length were retrieved upslope of slides, the glide plane and redeposited material downslope of the slide evacuation area. This sampling activity was supported by detailed acoustic surveys with Parasound and multibeam to remap critical areas for mass wasting in search for events, e.g. triggered by the recent Mw 8.8 Maule Earthquake, such as flanks of submarine canyons or previously detected submarine slides and to fill data gaps in the existing bathymetric data. The major activity of the entire cruise was dedicated to the search and detailed sampling of manifestations of fluid discharge activity on the Chilean forearc. A total of 11 deployments with the video sled OFOS and 12 dives by the ROV KIEL 6000 were conducted for ground-truthing of information which indicated possible seep activity and has been obtained during previous cruises to the Chilean forearc. In five working areas we found manifestations of fluid discharge. In these areas the survey was followed by an intense sampling of bottom water, sediments, carbonates, mega and meiofauna and the deployment of instrumentation on the seafloor. The goal of these deployments was to measure in situ seabed methane emission rates and associated fluxes of sulfide and major electron acceptors such as oxygen at seep sites along the Chilean margin and to understand its controls. This was accompanied by CTD casts to trace oxygen and the fate of methane discharge in the water column. Sediment cores obtained by multicorer or ROV were used for the geochemical characterization of the pore water and microbiological studies which include turnover rate measurements, molecular studies, flow through experiments and sampling of active sediments. Authigenic carbonates obtained by TV-Grab or ROV were sampled for fauna, biomarker studies and investigations to reconstruct the growth structures, calcification processes and fluid-pathway systematic. The sampling of sediments and carbonates recovered a unique fauna with 79 different taxa, several of them appear to be species new to science.

Description: The main goal of MSM21/4 was the study of gas hydrate system off Svalbard. We addressed this through a comprehensive scientific programme comprising dives with the manned submersible JAGO, seismic and heat flow measurements, sediment coring, water column biogeochemistry and bathymetric mapping. At the interception of the Knipovich Ridge and the continental margin of Svalbard we collected seismic data and four heat flow measurements. These measurements revealed that the extent of hydrates is significantly larger than previously thought and that the gas hydrate system is influenced by heat from the oceanic spreading centre, which may promote thermogenic methane production and thus explain the large extent of hydrates. At the landward termination of the hydrate stability zone we investigated the mechanisms that lead to degassing by taking sediment cores, sampling of carbonates during dives, and measuring the methane turn-over rates in the water column. It turned out that the observed gas seepage must have been ongoing for a long time and that decadal scale warming is an unlikely explanation for the observed seeps. Instead seasonal variations in water temperatures seem to control episodic hydrate formation and dissociation explaining the location of the observed seeps. The water column above the gas flares is rich in methane and methanotrophic microorganisms turning over most of the methane that escapes from the sea floor. We also surveyed large, until then uncharted parts of the margin in the northern part of the gas hydrate province. Here, we discovered an almost 40 km wide submarine landslide complex. This slide is unusual in the sense that it is not located at the mouth of a cross shelf trough such as other submarine landslides on the glaciated continental margins around the North Atlantic. Thus, the most widely accepted explanation for the origin of such slides, i.e. overpressure development due to deposition of glacial sediments on top of water rich contourites, is not applicable. Instead we find gas-hydrate-related bottom simulating reflectors underneath the headwalls of this slide complex, possibly indicating that subsurface fluid migration plays a major role in its genesis.

Description: Carbon capture and storage (CCS), both on- and offshore, is expected to be an important technique to mitigate anthropogenic effects on global climate by isolating man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) in deep geological formations. In marine environments, however, the potential impacts of CO2 leakage, appropriate detection methods, and risk and pathways of atmospheric emissions are poorly defined. The natural CO2 gas seeps that occur in the relatively shallow waters off the coast of Panarea Island (Aeolian Islands, Italy) can be studied as a large-scale, real-world analogue of what might occur at a leaking offshore CCS site and what tools can be used to study it. The oceanographic survey PaCO2 was performed aboard R/V Urania from 27 July – 01 August 2011 (Naples – Naples). The project’s ship-time was funded by Eurofleets, with work being performed as a sub-project of the Seventh Framework Programme projects “ECO2” and “RISCS”, which provided subsidiary funding. Large amounts of data and samples were collected during the cruise which will be interpreted in the coming months, with preliminary results detailed here. Of particular importance was the discovery of much larger areas showing gas seepage than previously reported. Interdisciplinary measurements were performed at the Panarea seepage site. The international team of scientists onboard R/V Urania performed complementary sampling and measurements for biological, chemical, and physical parameters throughout the area. Together with the dedication of R/V Urania’s Captain and crew, and the eagerness and cooperation of the scientific crew, we were able to obtain excellent scientific results during this six-day cruise.

Description: Summary Meteor Cruise M81/1 was dedicated to the investigation of the distribution of dissolved and particulate trace metals and their isotopic compositions (TEIs) in the full water column of the tropical Atlantic Ocean and their driving factors including main external inputs and internal cycling and ocean circulation. The research program is embedded in the international GEOTRACES program (e.g. Henderson et al., 2007), which this cruise was an official part of and thus corresponds to GEOTRACES cruise GA11. This cruise was completely dedicated to the trace metal clean and contamination-free sampling of waters and particulates for subsequent analyses of the TEIs in the home laboratories of the national and international participants. Besides a standard rosette for the less contaminant prone metals, trace metal clean sampling was realized by using a dedicated and coated trace metal clean rosette equipped with Teflon-coated GO-FLO bottles operated via a polyester coated cable from a mobile winch that was thankfully made available by the U.S. partners of the GEOTRACES program for this cruise. The particulate samples were also collected under trace metal clean conditions using established in-situ pump systems. The cruise track led the cruise southward from the Canary Islands to 11°S and then continued northwestward along the northern margin of South America until it reached Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. The track crossed areas of major external inputs including exchange with the volcanic Canary Islands, the Saharan dust plume, as well as the plume of the Amazon outflow. In terms of internal cycling the equatorial high biological productivity band, as well as increased productivity associated with the Amazon Plume were covered. All major water masses contributing the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, as well as the distinct narrow equatorial surface and subsurface east-west current bands were sampled. A total of 17 deep stations were sampled for the different dissolved TEIs, which were in most cases accompanied by particulate sampling. In addition, surface waters were continuously sampled under trace metal clean conditions using a towed fish.

Description: Summary During this cruise a detailed multi-disciplinary research program was conducted at the Peruvian oxygen minimum zone (OMZ) within the framework of the Kiel SFB 754. Investigations were primarily conducted along a depth transect at 12° S. Major aim was to advance understanding of how OMZ´s are maintained and to determine feedbacks of benthic nutrient release on the currently expanding Peruvian OMZ with a major focus on i. variability of benthic nutrient release in response to hydrodynamic forcing and regional differences in bottom water levels of oxygen (O2), nitrate (NO3-), nitrite (NO2-), and sedimentary carbon content, ii. diapycnal and advective fluxes of excess dinitrogen (N2), ammonium (NH4+), phosphorous (P), iron (Fe), silicate (Si), and radium isotopes between the benthic boundary layer, and the stratified interior ocean as well as their entrainment into the surface mixed layer and iii. processes involved in the respective benthic N, Fe, and P cycles. To achieve this goal, physical and biogeochemical measurements were conducted in the water column as well as at the sea floor. For investigations in the water column a total of 84 CTD casts, 41 micro-structure CTD, 20 in situ pump and 12 GoFlo deployments were performed. Sediment samples were obtained during 50 multiple corer casts, 12 gravity corers and 10 benthic chamber lander deployments. Furthermore a profiler lander was used to determine in situ microprofiles of O2, NO3- and nitrous oxide (N2O) in situ. Microprofiles were obtained using glass-microsensors that were pushed into the sediment in 300 μm increments. In order to obtain time series data on the oxygen distribution and the current regime oceanographic moorings were distributed along the 12°S transect in addition to four benthic satellite-landers each equipped with upward looking ADCPs. Lastly, a glider swarm was established at 12°S. These instruments were deployed for the duration of cruise M92 as well as for the subsequent M93 cruise. Deviating from the cruise proposal, more time was spent for station works at the depth transect at 12° S. Major aim of this cruise was to obtain a coherent data set of all involved groups, which however took slightly more time than originally planned, yet bears a high scientific potential. Additionally, it was discovered that at 12° S in shallow waters sulphide was released from the seabed into the bottom water. Furthermore, in water depths from about 120 to 200 m nitrite in addition to nitrate was available in high concentrations which affects the benthic nitrogen cycle to a hitherto unknown extent. Hence these stations were more intensely investigated than originally planned. Weather conditions were fine and all deployments of the scientific gear went very well. It is expected that after analyses and synthesis of the different data sets from the different disciplines the scientific questions above can be addressed to broad extent.