The iMAR cruise “The Integrated assessment of the distribution of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) in the Azores region” took place aboard the Research Vessel Pelagia of the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) between May 19th and June 2nd 2021.

This expedition was funded by the SEA OCEANS program of Eurofleets+ and the H2020 European project iAtlantic, and was led by the University of the Azores (Portugal) in collaboration with the Hydrographic Institute and University of Porto (Portugal), the University of Aarhus (Denmark), the National Oceanography Center (United Kingdom), GEOMAR (Germany), the University Museum of Bergen (Norway), the PP Shirshov Institute of Oceanology (Russia), and the University of Vale do Itajaí (Brazil).

During the iMAR cruise we performed 28 stations for multibeam surveys, summing 171:30 hours of surveys, 5,500 km2 of mapped seabed (mainly in the North portion of the MAR in the Exclusive Economic Zone around the Azores), in 8 main areas and during many of the 2,500 km of transits

All multibeam data processing was treated by Leonor Neves de Sousa (Instituto Hidrográfico) with the software “CARIS HIPS & SIPS”.These are the .all files of multibeam row data about 28 stations, between 18 May and 2 June, with information about seamounts, ridges and depressions of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge in the Azores.