Expedition 14 · Clarion–Clipperton Zone
Below the light, the ocean is lit by things falling — flakes of plankton, mucus and dust that take six weeks to reach the floor. For 31 days the Calder holds station over one patch of abyss and counts every flake on the way down.
Station-keeping · current 0.4 kn from the east
The vessel
Dynamic positioning keeps the Calder inside a five-metre circle for a month at a time. Everything aboard is there to measure a snowfall nobody has ever seen with their own eyes.
Three cones moored at 500, 1,500 and 3,500 m catch what falls for 28 days, then seal themselves and wait for the acoustic release.
3 × 0.5 m²A laser holographic camera images every particle in a 40 ml volume, eleven times a second, without touching a single flake.
11 fpsOur 6,000 m work-class vehicle, rated for nine hours on the bottom and a gentle enough thruster wash not to lift the floor.
6,000 mAbyssal plain · 4,180 m
What survives the fall becomes the softest ground on Earth — and a slow vault for the carbon that once floated at the surface. Our cores read it like tree rings.