With the sun rising over the Western Pacific, scientists and crew on an expedition aboard the R/V Roger Revelle set out to deploy a basket dredge to collect rock samples from the seafloor at the Izu-Bonin trench. The objective of this cruise held last November 2014 was to conduct geochemical studies of the incoming oceanic crust at the Izu-Bonin-Mariana subduction zone. Prof. Pat Castillo and other researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography were joined by collaborators from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, and the Qinqdao Institute of Marine Geology. Photo credit: Emmanuel “Soli” Garcia (UCSD)