[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
Erin Easton (interview): “Our expectations and goals for this cruise were to collect representative fauna from the Nazca Ridge and Salas y Gómez Ridge and the Juan Fernandez ridge. And we want to look to see if we can identify, how those benthic or seafloor communities of animals change with depth and among the different seamounts. And, we were looking to see if there were any, if each community of the seamount was distinct or if they were similar, so that we can inform conservation management decisions.”
[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
Erin Easton (interview): “So, on this expedition, we were able to, observe over 150 species that have not been reported for the region and we believe potentially 100 or more of those are new species to science. We observed, these large urchins called cactus urchins. There they were quite tall, a half a meter sort of tall. And, we saw them in large clusters. We observed forests of corals, so we saw a forest of bamboo corals that were probably thousands of years old. We also saw many other species of corals that were probably on the order of thousands of years old.”
[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
Dr. Jyotika Virmani (interview): “In addition to the sampling, I think we mapped about over 52,000km² of the sea floor as well.”
[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
Dr. Jyotika Virmani (interview): “There’s a lot of areas of the world that have never been seen and never been mapped. So, in addition to the new species, they discovered four new seamounts as well, which are basically underwater mountains, one of which is, you know, 3.5 kilometers tall. So they’re not little features. They’re quite big features. And this part of the world is important because of its biodiversity and, also because it’s a very interesting geological region. It’s the meeting of a number of plates, tectonic plates.”
[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
Erin Easton (interview): “We’ve expanded our knowledge of the biodiversity of the ocean substantially. We believe through our observations, we’ve increased the number of known species for this region by roughly 34%, possibly more. And, that’s all biodiversity that we had no clue existed. The over 100 potential new species. Those are species new to science. And with more changes occurring across the world, more and more marine communities are at risk before we ever know what’s there and their importance. So, it’s really important that we understand which fauna and which organisms live where, and what are the parameters that are suitable for their persistence so that we can maintain healthy and sustainable oceans.”
[Highlights of deep-sea exploration of seamounts, deep landscape, and biodiversity]
This script was provided by The Associated Press.