iAtlantic participants Anne-Cathrin Wölfl and Colin Devey (GEOMAR, Kiel) spent over six weeks in December 2019 and January 2020 using the German research vessel RV Maria S Merian (pictured above) to make a bathymetric map of the seafloor of the tropical Atlantic seafloor between the territorial water of the Cape Verde islands and the Caribbean for use in the iAtlantic project.
This part of the seafloor was 99% unmapped before their expedition, so choosing which route to follow and where to map was both easy and difficult! In the end, the mapping produced a 60 km wide and 3100 km long mapped “transect”across the ocean, covering almost a quarter-million square kilometres. The map shows a myriad of seafloor forms and will provide an invaluable basis for in-situ examinations of the habitats which it hosts.
