The SPANBIOS cruise is part of the ¿Tropical Deep Sea Benthos¿ (TDSB) exploration program, carried out by the MNHN and the IRD since the end of the 70s. These cruises target the island slopes and seamounts of the upper bathyal zone in the inter-tropical zone for continuing the naturalistic exploration in order to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes that structure this biodiversity. For forty years, the samples gathered by these cruises are studied by a vast international network of taxonomists who have so far described more than 4,000 new species. Over the past twenty years, the accumulation of data from a wide variety of habitats and geographic areas, as well as the use of molecular biology tools allowed studies of the structure of the biodiversity and thus to understand the processes that explain it. This program therefore combines a sampling strategy that aims at maximizing the discovery of new species both by targeting regions and environments that have been little explored, but also, and by diversifying the sampling methods, the size ranges of the organisms collected and the methods used to study them.

The international health situation leaded us to reposition the project, initially planned in Papua New Guinea, in New Caledonia in order to avoid moving the RV Alis out from the New Caledonian EEZ where it is based. Consequently, the cruise plan was deployed in New Caledonia and complemented the series of campaigns carried out since 2016 as part of the La Planète Revisitée program in New Caledonia (Kanacono 2016, Kanadeep 1, Kanadeep 2).

In this perspective, the objective of the project was to continue to fill the gaps identified in the knowledge of the deep habitats of the marine park and the island slopes of New Caledonia by collecting data on unknown or little known habitats and geographic areas.

The survey used the Warren and the rock dredges and the French beam trawl as sampling techniques. The bathymetric sounders and fishery sounders were started as much as possible and will complete the datasets on the EEZ (collaboration Service de Géologie, IRD, CPS).