Expedition in 60 Seconds: Heceta Bank
How do we know where to explore? The Nautilus team has spent this week mapping along the Oregon coast using multibeam sonar and sub-bottom profiler technology to reveal seafloor landscape and underlying sediment layers--and help identify where we should explore with ROVs. With this data, Oregon State University researchers are studying how humans may have migrated into North America along these submerged shorelines during the last glacial maximum.
Heceta Bank
Returning south along the coast of Oregon, this expedition will conduct geophysical surveys near Heceta Bank in order to search for late Pleistocene-aged remnant landforms and possible archaeological sites. This is a multidisciplinary problem that requires data generated by Earth scientists and archaeologists to answer questions about past coastal environments and prehistoric human migration.
