The Rainbow 2019 cruise on board of RV Pelagia allocated 2 days of work to explore 2 different deep-sea areas of the Azores region using the NIOZ Hopper tow-cam system. Overall, 6 successful video transects were carried out, generating more than 18 hours of seafloor images. These dives provided information along 17.8 km of seabed, at depths that ranged between 430 and 2,500 meters. One of the main objectives of the cruise was to contribute to the understanding of the spatial distribution patterns of benthic megafauna species around the Rainbow hydrothermal vent site, and the unexplored Sarda seamount located on the western side of the MAR.

In a long-lasting collaboration with scientists from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), deep-sea scientists from IMAR Instituto do Mar and Okeanos University of the Azores joined the RV Pelagia cruise 64PE454 to improve the understanding on the sphere of influence of hydrothermal vents on the distribution of deep-sea megafauna around vent sites and to explore the Sarda seamount to improve our knowledge on the distribution and abundance of large Vulnerable Marine Ecosystem indicator species and deep-sea commercial fishes in the large Azores region. This was the first time we visited seamounts on the western side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.