Nathaniel B. Palmer 0304B underway geophysics

This cruise went from Barrow, Alaska to Lyttelton, New Zealand via Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Honolulu, Hawaii and Napier, New Zealand. Data sets collected included the following: swath bathymetry (archived at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory), gravity and magnetics (archived at the National Geophysical Data Center), ODEC Bathy2000 3.5 kHz echo sounder with subbottom penetration (currently no archive available), and limited multichannel seismic data collected as part of equipment testing.

The main scientific objectives of the cruise were as follows: to collect data on the Cenozoic marine magnetic anomalies and seafloor spreading fabric of the Pacific plate south of the Aleutian trench; to acquire detailed bathymetry to fill in some unsurveyed regions around the Hawaiian islands; to study the character of fracture zones south of Hawaii; to survey some lines across the Osbourn Trough, a dead spreading center in the southwest Pacific Ocean, near the Tonga Trench; to survey a line parallel to, and outboard of, the Kermadec trench, in order to study the strength of the Pacific plate in the subduction zone; and to survey an area of gas hydrates east of the North Island of New Zealand.