- Place: New Caledonia
Loyalty Basin, Norfolk Ridge
- Participants:
- Claude Lévi, Pierre Cotillon (mission chiefs)
- Philippe Bouchet
- Alain Crosnier
- F. Coustillas
- Dominique Doumenc
- Jacques Forest
- Christian Gaillard
- Alain Guille
- Bernard Laurin
- Jean-Louis Menou
- Bernard Métivier
- Claude Monniot
- Alain Pascal
- C. Retiere
- Bertrand Richer de Forges
- P. Rigolot
- Michel Rio
- E. Colin
- Bernard Séret
- Material used:
- Ship: R.V. Jean Charcot
- Sampling tackles:
- Küllenberg corer
- Usnel box-corer
- Sanders epibenthic sledge
- Beam-trawl
- Warén Dredge
- Stations list
- Results:
Abstract
In August and September 1985, a cruise of 32 days was carried out
by R.V. "Jean Charcot", under the direction of Professor C.
Lévi. The areas explored were south of the Isle of Pines and
the slopes of the Loyalty Islands basin between 400 and 3850 m, and
109 core sampling, dredging and trawling operations were achieved.
The "Jean Charcot"'s mufti-narrow-beam echosounder Seabeam made
possible the precise survey needed by the sedimentologists to do
their coresampling. Biological specimens were collected with a
4-meter beam trawl, and on the hard bottoms by specially adapted
Warén dredges: the epibenthic dredge was used a few times in
the deepest waters.
This cruise gathered varied fauna from the upper bathyal slopes,
in the sedimentary basins and from the seamounts. On account of the
presence of many relict species, the bathyal fauna of this region may
be regarded as a vestige of the marine populations of the ancient
Tethys sea. The paleontologists were surprised to find examples of a
group of crinoids that had supposedly disappeared in the Jurassic.
Their persistence of this ancient fauna re-opens questions about the
role played by this bathyal zone as a place of refuge and about the
stability of the environment since the dislocation of the continent
of Gondwanaland (150 million years ago).
