As RV TKK’s first western North Pacific cruise of 2025, the “PIN-Pump” cruise reached 167.75°E in the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre and 50.85°N in the subarctic region, thereby extending the vessel’s operational envelope to its furthest eastern and northern limits in the Pacific.

From May to July, this cruise provided the platform for researchers aboard RV TKK to conduct comprehensive multidisciplinary observations covering physical, chemical, and biological processes aboard RV TKK. 223 over-the-side operations were conducted during this cruise, including 145 CTD casts, 36 turbulence observations, 25 multi-net plankton trawls, 11 in situ LVPs, 5 sediment sampler deployments, 1 Deep-sea In Situ Incubation System deployment, and aerosol sampling.

Despite the cold and foggy subarctic weather, the science team successfully recovered XMU’s first sediment trap, yielding valuable samples for studies of carbon export fluxes, biological pump efficiency, and the transport and degradation of particulate organic carbon in the western North Pacific.

Photos: Yu Zhang, Kan Zhang, Ziyi Wu, Jie Gao

Revised by MarOps