Pacific Deep-Sea Discoveries: Geological and Biological Exploration, Patterns, and Processes

The Pacific is the largest ocean on our planet and yet remains largely unexplored. However, there has been a recent spike in the amount of new information and research findings resulting from an increase in ships with deep-water vehicles operating in these regions. To name a few, the NOAA ship Okeanos Explorer just completed its 3-year CAPSTONE campaign to investigate the deep waters of the US Pacific Monuments, the Schmidt Ocean Institute's ship R/VFalkor has completed a variety of individual projects from Hawaii to the Mariana Back Arc, and the University of Hawaii ships have ongoing projects in the Emperor Seamounts. These efforts have largely focused on benthic biology and geology and with more limited scope, pelagic biology. Specific topics have included ferromanganese-encrusted seamount communities, deep-sea corals and fisheries, hydrothermal vents, subduction zones, back-arc geology, and the geologic history of seamounts on the Pacific plate. The information gleaned from these projects will hopefully be used to effectively motivate more research and to help manage ocean resources across the Pacific Ocean. This multidisciplinary Research Topic in Frontiers in Marine Science will consist of discoveries and syntheses of the expeditions’ results from the deep Pacific region. Specifically, we encourage baseline descriptions of new habitats and regions, new species and habitat discoveries, synthesis across data layers, and insights into the deep-sea biological, geological, and oceanographic processes in the region. Abstracts to indicate interest are due May 1st, 2018, with final manuscripts to be submitted no later than January 7th, 2019.