This expedition represents the culmination of ongoing collaboration between National Institute for Undersea Science and Technology- Ocean Biotechnology Center and Repository and University of New Hampshire explorers that use technical diving to characterize deep reef communities and to assess the organisms for their biotechnology potential. Marc Slattery and company have experience working in the twilight zone of the Bahamas and Cayman Islands, and preliminary data from these studies indicate that the deep reef sponges are significantly more bioactive and biodiverse than the surrounding shallow reefs. To date, the Indo-Pacific deep reefs have been relatively unexplored despite the fact that this region encompasses far more biodiversity than the Caribbean.