Knowledge of the biology of offshore Venezuela is extremely poor, essentially limited to SCUBA diving depths (around 30 metres), with absolutely no biological investigations of the entire bathyal region (depths of 200 to 2,000 metres). Working in collaboration with the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, SERPENT is using ROVs to explore the diversity and density of the seabed communities in the region. A first trip to the Orca field, north-east of Venezuela in the Orinioco River fan, took place in July/August 2007 to the Sovereign Explorer, enabled through SERPENT partners Statoil, Transocean and Subsea 7.
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