In September, The NSFC Open Research Cruise in the central SCS (NORC2022-06) was accomplished onboard RV TKK. This expedition was split into two cruise legs—the geological and geophysical leg (KK2304) and the comprehensive biogeochemical leg (KK2306). Hongmei Chen and Yuan Shen from MEL served as the chief scientists of each separate leg. This cruise supported thirty-nine NSFC-funded projects, and 59 scientists and researchers from 13 domestic institutions. RV TKK sailed about 6,579 nautical miles during 50 days at sea.

During the KK2304 cruise leg, 64 over-the-sided operations were implemented at 20 stations on the ship, including CTD casts, gravity cores, box samplers, heat flow probes, benthic trawls, and rock trawls. Over 390 operations were carried out at 52 stations during the KK2306 cruise leg, including CTD casts, deployments of plankton samplers, and LVPs.

Heat flow probes (Photo: Xiaobin Shi)

Box samplers (Photo: Jun Liu)

CTD seawater sampling and Lab analyses and tests (Photo: Zhifeng Yang)

Multiple plankton sampler deployments (Photo: Yuan Shen)

Multiple plankton samples (Photo: Zhifeng Yang)

Deployments of LVPs (Photo: Yuan Shen)

Photo: Xiaobin Shi, Jun Liu, Yuan Shen, Zhifeng Yang

Revised by MarOps