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decision had been taken to conduct this experiment in the South Pacific, off
the coast of Peru, at about 88 degrees west longitude and 7° south
latitude. The researchers had divided the area into 10 pie-shaped
segments and a peripheral zone. The central part occupied about 11
square kilometres and had a diameter of about 2 nautical miles. They had
conducted four cruises through the area over the course of the project. As
they knew little about the area at the start, they had carried out a SeaBeam
survey to gather information about the topography and currents. They had
decided to work at a location close to the German manganese nodule claim
area, in a flat region with nodule coverage of about 5 to 10 kilograms/m² --
probably the lowest coverage suitable for commercial mining. They had
chosen a low-coverage area for reasons related to the sampling equipment
used. In an initial survey, they had located an appropriate area for baseline
studies.
The name DISCOL -- derived from “disturbance and recolonisation
experiment in a manganese nodule area of the deep South Pacific”, had
been funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology from June 1988 to
December 1993. The fourth cruise had been called ECOBENT, short for
“ecological investigation of the abyssal benthos of the deep South Pacific”.
The name had been changed because of funding regulations in Germany,
where ministries did not finance projects longer than five years. The
researchers were doing the same work as before but under a different
name.
The 1996 investigations had been broader because geochemists,
soil engineers and geologists had jumped in. ECOBENT’s focus had been
on station number 2, the DISCOL station. The researchers had chosen five
stations in the peripheral area and another five at random in the central
area.
Operations and findings
The SeaBeam survey in 1989 had shown a small hill in the north
and a flat area in the south where the researchers had chosen the DISCOL
area, at a mean water depth of 4140-4160 m. The standard gear included
a multiple corer, a modified USNEL box corer, baited traps to get
information about organisms migrating between the seabed and the water
column up to 200 m above the seafloor, and a still photographic camera
system called the Freefall Benthos Observation System (FBOS) to obtain
information on migrating and demersal fish. This system, equipped with a
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 351