The 2003 dive season was the most successful dive season that we have had in our 22-year history. We accomplished a total of 151 dives including 81 submersible dives and 70 ROV operations. HURL successfully completed a 64-day cruise to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, its longest ever expedition, funded primarily by the NOAA's office of Ocean Exploration.

The HURL 2003 NURP research program included 18 manned submersible dives and 12 nights of ROV lowerings in the main Hawaiian Islands. These derived from 2 projects: 2001/5 "The impact of volcanic and hydrothermal materials on nutrient and chemical fluxes in the ocean: exposure experiments and in situ inoculations off Hawai‘i," Staudigel, Yayanos, & Tebo; and 2000/6 "Submarine-canyon and scavenger communities on the Hawaiian slope," Smith & Vetter.

The 64-day expedition to the NW Hawaiian Islands (primarily funded by OE) comprised 2 legs and 5 projects. A total of 19 Pisces IV, 30 Pisces V and 56 RCV-150 dives were completed. The accomplishments of this cruise were reported in a poster entitled “National Undersea Research Program (NURP) – Hawai‘i Undersea Research Laboratory Research Accomplishments in 2003” that was presented at the AGU Fall Meeting. The first leg of the cruise consisted of two projects, "Submarine Canyon and Scavenger Communities" (PIs Craig Smith & Eric Vetter) and "Characteristics of Deepwater Fish and Precious Corals on the Seamounts Neighboring Hawaii’s Most Remote Seal Colonies" (PI: Frank Parrish). Three projects were performed during the second leg of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Expedition. Two of the three projects, "Reproductive Biology and Genetics of Hawaiian Precious Corals" and "Seamount Surveys of Deep-Water Coral Distributions as Related to Geological Setting in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands" funded by NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration, involved collaboration between HURL and Dr. Amy Baco-Taylor, a postdoctoral researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The third project, "Impact of Bottomfishing in the NWHI Coral Reef Ecosystem Reserve", was a survey of fisheries, funded by the National Ocean Service.

Two major review panels were held in 2003. The first was the end of August, which reviewed the HURL dive proposals for the 2004-2005 time frames. The panel resulted in an excellent planned dive program both in the Hawaiian Islands as well as farther a field in American Samoa and the Western Pacific. The second was the coral reef panel, which evaluated scuba and advanced technical diving proposals for coral reef work. This work was supported chiefly through NOAA Fisheries as well as the Marine Sanctuaries Program. A well conceived program meeting NOAA priorities was put together as a result of this reef initiative.

A number of public outreach programs were conducted during the period. The most well attended of these was a program of displays and ship and submersible visits arranged largely for school children at the completion of our major 64-day Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Expedition. This was well covered by the local press and TV stations. Half a dozen presentations were also made to various groups on our discovery and evaluation of the Japanese Midget Submarine found off Pearl Harbor. This work was also the subject of three hour-long TV shows which aired in early December. Of these, the special entitled ‘Deep Sea Detectives’ on the History Channel featured the laboratory and submersibles very prominently.