E/V Nautilus will transition to conducting operations within the central Pacific for the next several years, starting with a 10-day mapping expedition funded by NOAA Ocean Exploration through the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute. The mapping on this expedition will contribute directly to filling mapping gaps in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) southeast of Hawai’i, and also filling gaps in international waters during the mapping transit. As we move west from North America, we acknowledge the indigenous and local communities of the Pacific Rim and Oceania — including Native Hawaiians, Polynesians, Melanesians, Micronesians, Papuans, and other Pasifika peoples — that have stewarded through generations the ocean, seas, coastlines, and lands of what is now the Pacific Ocean.