The purpose of this cruise is to map the sea floor near the Thera caldera in the Sea of Crete. The R/V Endeavor will be joined by a Greek research team aboard the R/V Aegaeo, operated by the Helenic Center for Marine Research (HCMR).

The team will utilize the vehicle systems owned and operated by the Institute for Exploration and the Institute for Archaeological Oceanography at URI. The primary search vehicle will be the five-channel side-sonar and sub-bottom penetrating sonar system ECHO. In addition, two imaging vehicles will be
used, the towed vehicle ARGUS, and the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) HERCULES. For efficiency, the program will be divided into two phases, the first is a side-scan sonar survey operation, followed by ROV operations. These ROVs will enable us to ground truth the acoustic targets identified during the
geophysical survey operation.