One of the Royal Navy’s specialist scientific ships, HMS Scott, has surveyed the mid-Atlantic, in her first mission in nearly two years.
The Devonport-based research ship has been out of action since the autumn of 2013 undergoing the revamp, Royal Navy wrote.
Scott, which is the largest of the five vessels in the Royal Navy’s hydrographic squadron, typically spends the summer in the Atlantic before shifting to waters east of Suez in the winter as her suite of sonars scan the deep ocean in high resolution.
Those sensors can survey 150 square kilometers of seabed every hour, Royal Navy noted.
Scanning the floor of the Atlantic between the Azores and the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, the hydrographic team on board found a canyon one kilometer deep, a volcano towering 800 meters, an underwater river and a peak rising 2,000 meters from the seabed.
“ It’s always exciting to see something that no one else has ever seen before, especially for many of the newly-qualified sailors on-board who are conducting their first survey,” said Lt Paul ‘Shady’ Lane , the ship’s operations officer.
“It’s exhilarating to know that with all the satellites, GPS and modern technology there is still so much undiscovered.”
Scott is expected to conduct surveys for up to 300 days a year.