Survey programme

Below three thousand metres

Abyssal is a shared survey programme. We put instruments on the seabed, leave them there, and publish everything they record.

Instruments

Landers built to be lost

Each lander is cheap enough that losing one is a bad week rather than a bad year. Aluminium frame, glass spheres, an acoustic release and a strobe.

Deployment

Down in ninety minutes, up when called

A lander free-falls to the seabed under ballast and sits recording until a ship returns and calls it back. Most come back. Some do not.

Most of the seafloor has never been measured, only estimated

Data

Raw first, tidy later

Every recording is published as it came off the instrument, before anyone cleans it. The processing scripts go up beside it so the steps are auditable.

Ship time

Berths for people outside the programme

Every cruise carries places for researchers with no funding of their own. Bring an instrument that fits the frame and we will drop it for you.

Get involved

Tell us what you would measure

Send the instrument, the depth it needs and how long it has to sit there. The next deployment window and what is already on the frame are both public.