In early November, RV TKK successfully completed the NSFC Open Research Cruise in the central South China Sea (NORC2025-06) and returned to Xiamen. The expedition supported 31 NSFC-funded projects from 19 institutions and was organized into three cruise legs covering geological, geophysical, and biogeochemical investigations.

The geological and geophysical leg conducted 12 stations and 2 survey lines with 83 over-the-side operations, including coring, CTD casts, deep-sea platform deployments, and large-volume seawater sampling. High-quality sediment cores exceeding four meters in length were obtained using dynamic positioning, while principal investigators mentored early-career scientists during field operations.

The Haidou-1 leg focused on cold-seep systems, integrating submersible dives with multidisciplinary observations to investigate fluid–solid interactions and ecosystem processes. This was followed by a biogeochemical leg completing 105 operations at 40 stations, generating key datasets on water-column structure and plankton dynamics. Academic forums held across the cruise legs further strengthened scientific exchange and collaboration.

Photos: Jun Li, Jiaqi Qiu, Hongmei Chen

Revised by MarOps