Expedition off coast to explore underwater volcano
A team of 16 scientists is set to explore an underwater mountain off the coast of B.C. that has already yielded creatures never seen before, living kilometres below the surface.
The two-week expedition is focused on the Explorer Seamount, Canada’s largest underwater volcano, which is home to an otherworldly environment of glass sponge reefs, dubbed “spongetopia” by researchers.
Using submersible remotely operated vehicles equipped with robotics, the Pacific Seamounts Expedition 2019 will document the community of plants and animals as well as possible human-caused impacts with an eye to protecting this unique habitat.
There are tens of thousands of seamounts — underwater mountains — in the Pacific Ocean that create an amazing range of near-vertical habitat that varies dramatically by depth and with the presence of hydrothermal vents that gush geothermally heated water.
“There’s an area offshore of Vancouver Island that has been identified as a globally rare hot spot of deepsea biodiversity, which means there are a lot of very cool animals living in a very small area,” said marine biologist Cherisse Du Preez of the federal Fisheries Department
This year’s mission is a followup to last summer’s expedition to SGaan Kinglas-Bowie Seamount, Dellwood Seamount and Explorer, by scientists from Ocean Networks Canada and the Fisheries Department.
“That was the first-ever research expedition to explore underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and to figure out what lives there and how best to protect them,” she said.
Using the robotic subs, the researchers will collect specimens several kilometres deep and with submersible drop cameras see for the first time what is living there.
High-resolution cameras, floodlights and sensors controlled from aboard the ship stream real-time images and data on temperature, oxygen levels and depth as the robots dive up to 2,000 metres.
Live streaming will be broadcast by Fisheries beginning Friday at 11 a.m. till 7 p.m. and daily between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. through July 28.
Last summer, researchers anchored monitors to the ocean floor to collect oceanographic data.
“When we collect that equipment, for the first time ever we will have a per-second reading of what is happening out there for an entire year,” said Du Preez.
Explorer Seamount will be in the researchers’ crosshairs this summer.
“We need to find out why it is such an outlier in every way, the environment around it, the animals that were on it,” she said. “There is an ancient forest made of glass sponge, almost like it has been petrified. We were very giddy watching those images, so we can’t wait to get back there to figure how this old growth forest exists kilometres under the ocean.”
Data collection and sample collection will run 24 hours a day while the vessel CCGS John P. Tully is on site.