RV Maria S. Merian MSM127

Cluster Expedition "MAURIBO"

MeBo deep-sea drilling off Mauritania

Expedition: 18. March - 20. April 2024
from/to: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (Spain)
NE Atlantic, NW Africa (Mauritania)

The Mauritanian continental margin is one of the core regions for the Bremen Cluster of Excellence "The Ocean Floor – Earth’s Uncharted Interface". Related to the high productivity (triggered by upwelling) and high sedimentation rates, the Mauritanian margin hosts the largest known cold-water coral mound province in the Atlantic Ocean, provides high-resolution paleo-archives of NW African climate variability, allows to trace the impact of sea level changes on methane seepage, and offers an ideal testing ground for investigating the applicability of ancient DNA as a proxy in marine sediments, and the robustness of proxy records. The Bremen Cluster expedition "MAURIBO" primarily aims to obtain long sedimentary records by using the Bremen sea floor drill rig MeBo70, in particular addressing the topics (I) Cold-water coral mound development and (II) NW African climate changes. The ancillary aim of the expedition is to obtain water, plankton and sediment samples (largely using the maintenance time of the MeBo between two deployments), in order to support the topics (III) The history of methane seepage, (IV) Records of ancient DNA, and (V) The robustness of the proxy record. The expedition contributes to all three Research Units of the Cluster:

Ocean Floor as Recorder	involved scientists
(I) Initiation and development of the Mauritanian cold-water coral mounds across glacial-interglacial periods triggered by paleoenvironmental change (Theme 3)	Hebbeln, Wienberg, Titschack, Freiwald
(II) Upwelling response to NW African climate changesits potential to offer high-resolution paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic records (Theme 1)	Bickert, Romero
(III) Deglacial history of methane seepage and its impact on local carbon cycling (Theme 1; in close cooperation with Ocean Floor as Reactor)	Mulitza, Schefuß
(IV) Co-registered records of ancient DNA and ecosystem change across the last deglaciation and within the Holocene (Theme 3)	Kucera, Morard, Willerslev
Ocean Floor as Receiver
(V) Testing the spatial and temporal proxy variability and the robustness of the proxy record (Theme 3; in close cooperation with Ocean Floor as Recorder)	Kucera, Laepple

Logo MSM127

Chief Scientist (MARUM)

Torsten Bickert

Study area

Further links

	Cluster: The Ocean Floor
	MeBo70
	Actual Position RV Maria S. Merian
	LDF - Uni Hamburg