RV Simon Stevin 23-490
Cruise summary report
| Cruise Info. | |
| Ship name (ship code) | RV Simon Stevin (11SS) |
| Cruise identifier | 23-490 |
| Cruise period | 2023-06-09 — 2023-06-15 |
| Status | Completed |
| Port of departure | Ostend, Belgium |
| Port of return | Ostend, Belgium |
| Purpose | Research |
| Objectives | The ultimate goal of the Deep History project is to reconstruct the late Quaternary submerged buried palaeolandscape in the southern North Sea (palaeo-fluvial systems, proglacial lake, Holocene inundation) and its link to possible prehistoric human occupation. In 2018 and 2019, three seismic surveys (two onboard RV Belgica and one onboard RV Simon Stevin) were carried out in the larger Brown Bank area, which resulted in a unique dataset of unprecedented quality. Targeted sampling in May 2019 resulted in the discovery of prehistoric landsurfaces, amongst which a peat surface, as well as several pieces wood and flint. In September 2019, a successful vibrocore survey was completed onboard the RV Simon Stevin targeting specific locations. As a consequence of Covid-19 measures, all planned surveys in 2020 were cancelled. In 2021, the Simon Stevin survey was twofold: (1) to reconstruct a (trans-boundary) regional stratigraphy by linking existing datasets located in Dutch and UK waters, through the use of high resolution Sparker and SES Quattro data; (2) extend some of the areas that were already surveyed at a greater resolution (i.e. narrow line spacing). Further seismic surveying and vibrocoring was performed in 2022. These data are collectively used to ground-truth specific seismic features during the 2023 survey. Two areas were specifically surveyed (Sparker) for colleagues from TNO (Hollandse Kust Zuid and BBQ), while one area was surveyed for Bradford University (PES, vibrocoring and Van Veen sampling; VC45 extended).
During the first 36 hours of the planned survey time, the weather was unfavourable throughout the entire Southern North Sea. It was therefore decided to delay the departure time until Friday 9th June 2023, 20:00 UTC. |
| Chief scientist | Ruth Plets (Flanders Marine Institute) |
| Cruise report |  (3.03 MB) |
| Ocean/sea areas | |
| General | North Sea |
| Specific | Southern North Sea |
