The deep waters overlying the Juan de Fuca Plate host amazing life forms, yet rarely are they viewed by humans, nor are most well documented digitally. Undergraduate participants in the University of Washington VISIONS ’14 educational program (http://interactiveoceans.washington.edu/story/VISIONS_14) recognized this lack of available information on deep-sea organisms that live in perpetual darkness in some of the most extreme environments on Earth. This experiential learning opportunity for undergraduates took place during the 85-day construction cruise for the National Science Foundation’s Regional Cabled Array, a component of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). During the VISIONS programs, students stood daily watches inside remotely operated vehicle (ROV) control labs, working alongside scientists, engineers, and the ship and ROV teams, to conduct their own research and outreach projects, and to learn about ship life.

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Wilcock, W.S.D., R.P. Dziak, M. Tolstoy, W.W. Chadwick Jr., S.L. Nooner, D.R. Bohnenstiehl, J. Caplan-Auerbach, F. Waldhauser, A.F. Arnulf, C. Baillard, and others. 2018. The recent volcanic history of Axial Seamount: Geophysical insights into past eruption dynamics with an eye toward enhanced observations of future eruptions. Oceanography 31(1):114–123, https://doi.org/10.5670/oceanog.2018.117.

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