Scientists learn ‘wonderland’ of life on deep-sea plateau off B.C. coast

Imagine floating down from above a towering arise as high as a Rockies and passing by imperishable slopes carpeted in ancient forests that are ripping with animal life.

Now, suppose that instead of drifting by a air, you’re solemnly falling underwater.

That arise is a formerly undiscovered archaic volcano low in a Pacific Ocean off B.C.’s Central Coast. Instead of trees, that ancient timberland is done adult of red tree corals, and a animals might embody countless class that, before now, have never been seen by humans.

This surreal knowledge was Robert Rangeley’s life for 16 days earlier this month. As scholarship executive for a non-profit Oceana Canada, Rangeley was partial of a organisation of researchers who watched from a video feed as dual remotely operated unmanned vehicles mapped and explored seamounts — active or asleep volcanoes that arise from a sea building — thousands of metres next a ocean’s surface.

“We were only glued to a screens,” Rangeley told CBC  News. “We would dive from 7 in a morning to 7 during night and each spin was different.”

Scientists watch a livestream of footage from remote-operate vehicles exploring seamounts off a B.C. coast. (Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners)

The goal was to try 3 seamounts — a SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie off a seashore of Haida Gwaii, and a Dellwood and Explorer seamounts serve south.

The organisation also detected 6 new seamounts during a expedition and collected some-more than 150 specimens that have been sent out for genetic analysis. Rangeley believes those specimens embody new class of consume and sea snail, and potentially some new corals.

“It was only arrange of a wonderland for a biologist to see,” he said.

“We saw hundreds of class — dozens and dozens of opposite kinds of fishes, and a operation of vertebrate species, from fanciful plume stars and crinoids and cucumbers and crabs, to lobsters and octopus and so on.”

A remote-operated car called Hercules is deployed from a EV Nautilus for a initial dive of a expedition. (Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners)

Representatives from Fisheries and Oceans Canada, a Haida Nation, Oceana Canada, and Ocean Networks Canada were all partial of a speed aboard a Ocean Exploration Trust’s boat EV Nautilus.

They wanted to learn some-more about these singular ecosystems that start adult dual kilometres underwater and are still mostly different to science.

Just a tiny commission of a world’s seamounts has been mapped to date. Researchers guess that a Pacific Ocean contains as many as 50,000 that arise 1,000 metres or more.

B.C. is a prohibited mark for these underwater mountains. About 87 per cent of famous seamounts in Canada are located in what scientists call a “Pacific Offshore Area of Interest” — a 139,700-square kilometre patch of sea west of Vancouver Island.

The scientists collected some-more than 150 specimens from a seamounts. (Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners)

“It’s unequivocally a formidable medium of sham lavas, ripples in a rock, cliffs and all else, and they’ve been all colonized … by all these animals — corals and sponges and anemones,” Rangeley said.

B.C.’s seamounts are also home to ethereal metre-high vase sponges, threatened rockfish species, and weird deep-sea class like a longfin dragonfish, that Rangeley compares to a monsters in a Alien movies.

Prowfish like these are frequency seen and frequency photographed. (Ocean Exploration Trust, Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners )

The perfect farrago of life a researchers saw has Rangeley job for a seamounts to be stable from bottom-contact fishing and other potentially mortal industry.

He pronounced a organisation saw mislaid fishing rigging on a slopes of a seamounts and found fishing lines tangled adult on a sea floor.

“Around a world, seamounts have been targeted for fishing since they are rarely prolific areas,” he said.

“The frail inlet and a significance for sea life is such that we only can’t be boring fishing rigging or deep-sea mining into these habitats.”

During a expedition, a unmanned vehicles also commissioned long-term monitoring apparatus on a Dellwood seamount to keep an eye on how a ecosystem changes over time.

A halibut swims divided from a organisation of yelloweye rockfish on a SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie Seamount. (Ocean Exploration Trust, Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners)This octopus was one of hundreds of animals a researchers saw when they explored seamounts off a B.C. coast. (Ocean Exploration Trust, Northeast Pacific Seamount Expedition Partners)

Article source: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/scientists-discover-wonderland-of-life-on-deep-sea-mountains-off-b-c-coast-1.4760033?cmp=rss