Over a 3-year period, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized and implemented a Pacific-wide field campaign entitled CAPSTONE: Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean NEeds. Under the auspices of CAPSTONE, NOAA mapped 597,230 km² of the Pacific seafloor (with ∼61% of mapped area located within US waters), including 323 seamounts, conducted 187 ROV dives totaling 891.5 h of ROV benthic imaging time, and documented >347,000 individual organisms.

In August of 2016, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer conducted the first-ever deepwater exploration of the Wake Atoll Unit of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument. In total, the ship conducted 14 ROV dives ranging from 350 to 3,136 meters depth. All explored seamounts are flat-topped guyots with mainly pillow lavas coated in ferromanganese crust exposed on their lower flanks. 

The Mountains in the Deep Expedition (EX1705), conducted from April 27, 2017, to May 19, 2017, onboard NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, collected valuable new information to support management and science needs throughout the Central Pacific Basin.

The purpose of this cruise (project number NF-19-01) in particular was to collect multibeam sonar bathymetry, acoustic backscatter, remotely operated vehicle optical validation, and fishery acoustics within coastal waters of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Scientists collected high-resolution multibeam and fishery acoustic data in mid-water depths approximately 11 to 3066 meters, in order to continue characterizing seafloor habitats within all U.S. States, Territories, and Commonwealths.

In September 2011, a three week research cruise was conducted by the Cooperative Institute for Ocean Exploration, Research, and Technology (CIOERT) at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute–Florida Atlantic University (HBOI–FAU) in collaboration with NOAA.