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Seamounts and coral: a conservation diary from the deep

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Christiana Hanaman
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« on: December 07, 2011, 02:05:31 am »

Seamounts and coral: a conservation diary from the deep
Orange roughy (c) NERC The orange roughy, a long-lived solitary fish, is targeted by deep-sea fisheries


    Diary from the deep
    Mission to scale deep mountains
    Seamount diary: December 2009

A team of scientists has set out on a six-week mission, funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, to explore the Indian Ocean's underwater mountains, or seamounts.

The scientists aboard the research vessel, the RRS James Cook, will study life thousands of metres below the surface.

In the third of her BBC Nature diary entries, Aurelie Spadone from the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, who is part of the team, describes the evidence she has seen of the far-reaching human impact on these deep sea habitats.
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Aurelie Spadone

    The fishing industry moves further away from the coasts and deeper into the ocean every day”

Aurelie Spadone IUCN

We're now half way through the cruise, although there is still a long way to go before reaching Port Elizabeth (South Africa), which is our arrival port. We are now in the vicinity of a seamount called Middle of What, the third of five scheduled stops on our itinerary.

Melville bank painted a very different picture to that of Coral seamount. Throughout our exploration of this site we have found evidence of human impact.

We saw lost lobster pots, drifting pieces of fishing longlines, broken trawl wires and even rubbish - mainly plastic bottles. All of these were floating around near the seabed like ghosts. They would often appear on the monitors displaying what our remote submarine's high-definition cameras were capturing from far below the vessel.

It was strangely impressive, but also frightening and depressing to see this gear appearing in the devastated landscape of the seamounts.

And all the detritus caused us a great deal of difficulty in completing our research dives.
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #1 on: December 07, 2011, 02:07:27 am »



    The fishing industry moves further away from the coasts and deeper into the ocean every day”

Aurelie Spadone IUCN
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2011, 02:08:32 am »

Remote but spoiled

Incredibly, this area, despite being thousands of miles out into the ocean, has been heavily exploited by the fishing industry.



Fishing net Fisheries use nets at up to 2,000m depth

Melville bank was fished in the late 1960s and 1970s, then more intensively between 2000 and 2002.

One fish in particular was the target species: the orange roughy, which can live up to 150 years and does not reproduce until it is 30-40 years old.

It is a solitary creature, but it forms big schools during the spawning period. Fishermen know this and take advantage of the situation, targeting these spawning schools. It is a real disaster for the fish population; many adults are removed.

Because seamounts attract so much life, and because coastal fish populations have been so depleted, these areas of the high seas attract the fisheries.

As shallow fish populations have become over-exploited, the fishing industry moves further away from the coasts and deeper into the ocean every day, using nets at 2,000m depth and trawling the seabed for fish.

Some deep-sea fishermen are aware of the problem and want to make their business sustainable.

One fisheries association, the SIODFA (Southern Indian Ocean Deepsea Fishers Association) declared on a voluntary basis some seamounts of the southern Indian Ocean as protected areas. This means that fisheries avoid these areas.

It is a positive move for deep sea habitats that helps to protect and conserve target species and their homes.

Unfortunately, globally, this is not the common practice. And the problem of unregulated fishing hampers these efforts amongst states and responsible fisheries.

It is also an ongoing threat to these fragile marine environments.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/15991999
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #3 on: December 07, 2011, 02:09:26 am »

Second mission to scale deep mountains announced
By Jennifer Carpenter Science reporter, BBC News



Octopus (Credit: S.Gotheil/IUCN) Seamounts are an oasis for species living in the deep sea



    Deep-sea fish captured on camera
    Seamount diary: December 2009
    Call to halt deep sea 'plunder'

Scientists are set to begin a six-week mission to explore the Indian Ocean's underwater mountains.

Aboard the UK research vessel the RRS James Cook, the team will study animals thousands of metres below the surface.

This year a report in the journal Marine Policy found that deep sea trawling is one of the most damaging forms of fishing.

The expedition will help scientists to better understand the threats to this environment.

The mission, led by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), is the second to visit the seamounts along the South-West Indian Ocean Ridge; the first set out in November 2009.

Seamounts are underwater mountains which rise to at least 1,000 metres above the sea floor.
Seamount communities

"Because of their interactions with underwater currents, the biodiversity that develops around them is remarkably rich," explained Aurelie Spadone, IUCN's marine programme officer and a member of the team.

"They attract a great diversity of species and act as a type of 'bed and breakfast' for deep-sea predators such as sharks, which often feed on seamount communities," she added.
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #4 on: December 07, 2011, 02:09:55 am »

The catch of deep-sea species has increased seven-fold since the mid-1960s, as stocks of shallower waters plummet and the fishing industry took to exploiting deeper waters.

Industrial fishing at depth, which generally relies on trawling the ocean's bottom with huge weighted nets, has a huge impact on seafloor ecosystems, say researchers.

Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of IUCN's Global Marine and Polar Programme explained that very little was known about the species associated with seamounts.

"Many of them grow and reproduce slowly, which makes them particularly vulnerable to overexploitation," he said.

"Deep-sea bottom fisheries, including bottom trawling, can damage seamount habitats and negatively impact fish stocks. It can also irreversibly damage cold water corals, sponges and other animals."

Alex Rogers of the University of Oxford and chief scientist on board RRS James Cook said: "We're hoping that this expedition will help us better understand this unique marine life and assess the threats it faces.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15593602
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #5 on: December 07, 2011, 02:10:21 am »



One of the highlights of the 2009 expedition was the discovery of a new species of squid
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Christiana Hanaman
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« Reply #6 on: December 09, 2011, 03:07:44 am »

Seamount diary: December 2009





Unidentified octopus
An unidentified octopus discovered at a depth of 500m

A new project led by the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) plans to unveil the mysteries of seamounts in the southern Indian Ocean, and help improve conservation and management of marine resources in the area.

A team of the world's leading experts, paired with scientists from the western Indian Ocean region, has been nominated by the IUCN and its partners to join the Norwegian research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen.

Leaving Reunion Island on the evening of November 12, 2009, the vessel is sailing towards the southwest Indian Ocean Ridge, where it will study six seamounts rising from the ocean floor located between 32°00' S and 41°00' S, before ending its voyage in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, on 20 December.



A seamount echogram showing the deep scattering layer.
A seamount echogram. The thick blue layer at the summit of the seamount represents the deep scattering layer (see A little background on the science, Tues 1 Dec, below)

Sarah Gotheil, Marine Programme Officer at IUCN, is onboard the vessel, capturing every aspect of the work.

The expedition is supported by expertise and funding supplied by partner organisations including; the United Nations Development Programme, the Global Environment Facility, Zoological Society of London, the EAF-Nansen project, the Institute of Marine Research, Agulhas and Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystems Project, the Marine Ecology Laboratory, University of Reunion and the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme.
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« Reply #7 on: December 09, 2011, 03:09:02 am »

MONDAY 21 DECEMBER - HOMEWARD BOUND

Land ahead! As we woke on Friday morning, we could see the coast of South Africa and knew the harbour of Port Elizabeth awaited us.

Arrival didn't mean the end of the work, though, and during the few days that separated us from our flights back home people were busy cleaning the ship and packing the samples.

The majority of the species collected will remain in South Africa, while a few will be shipped to England.

Before getting there, however, we had two last stations to study.

After Coral seamount and the "roaring forties", we sailed northward accompanied with a gale force wind towards Melville bank, the last seamount that we investigated on the southwest Indian Ocean Ridge.


Bean's sawtoothed eel (Serrivomer beanii)
A Bean's sawtoothed eel (Serrivomer beanii) captured at 500m

Melville turned out to be very different from Coral, and much more similar to the first seamounts that we studied.

It was a bit like returning to familiar grounds, although it brought its own surprises.

Among the species that we have collected, the barreleye was certainly one of the most special.

View the Seamount picture gallery for species sighted in the final week

Then we finally left the southwest Indian Ocean Ridge and steamed northward for two days to reach the last seamount of this cruise, south of Madagascar.

The area that we reached is called Walters Shoal - an enormous underwater plateau, with areas as shallow as 10 metres from the surface!

For our investigations, though, we went to a much deeper seamount, at about 1200 metres from the surface.

Initially, one of the main reasons for choosing this area was that it was known to attract seabirds, and Barau's petrels in particular, that come to feed here at this time of year.
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« Reply #8 on: December 09, 2011, 03:09:36 am »

We did not encounter as many seabirds as expected, but at least were back in a pleasant climate.

We also made some great catches, including a scorpionfish, a pelagic butterfish and a shorthorn fangtooth.

The very last trawl came up with the first octopus of the expedition, a ghostly looking squid and a tiny crustacean larva with impressive spikes.

Although the adventure at sea came to an end, the work is really just starting.

Many scientists will be busy analysing the data and working on the specimens collected for the next few years.

The next important step will be the organisation of a scientific workshop to identify all species caught and look at the stomach contents of certain specimens.
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« Reply #9 on: December 09, 2011, 03:10:11 am »



Unidentified fish caught at 700m
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« Reply #10 on: December 09, 2011, 03:10:41 am »

We hope that the former work will lead to the discovery of species new to science, while the latter will help us better understand the food chain in the areas surveyed.

Additional analyses will be carried out on the oceanographic work to improve our comprehension of the currents around the seamounts, and on the acoustics data.

All in all, it has been a very successful 40-day expedition over 6000 miles.

We gathered a very rich collection of data and specimens, and encountered a higher diversity of species than expected.

Nearly 7000 individual species or group of the same species have been labelled, and some were recorded for the first time in the region.
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« Reply #11 on: December 09, 2011, 03:11:03 am »



A scorpionfish captured 700m above the summit of the final underwater mountain.
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« Reply #12 on: December 09, 2011, 03:12:38 am »

The species collection includes an impressive variety of fish, shrimps, squids and gelatinous marine creatures.

Many more microscopic species of phytoplankton and zooplankton, representing the base of the food chain in the ocean, have also been collected.

The two seabird and marine mammal observers recorded thousands of seabirds from as many as 36 species, and 26 marine mammals.

It was also extremely interesting to discover that the six seamounts we surveyed are very different from each other, and we believe that our findings will certainly improve our global knowledge of seamount ecosystems.
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« Reply #13 on: December 09, 2011, 03:13:09 am »



A barreleye fish, which has huge eyes within a dome-shaped translucent head
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« Reply #14 on: December 09, 2011, 03:13:48 am »

THURSDAY 10 DECEMBER - THE ROARING FORTIES

After nearly two days of steaming, we reached the southernmost station that we have planned to investigate, at about 41° south.

It is a site off the southwest Indian Ocean ridge that would allow us to compare it to the other sites on the ridge.

We thus crossed the subtropical front and entered what is known as the roaring forties, an area famous for rough winds and waves.

But thankfully, we were welcomed by calm waters, as well as a thick fog, which rendered the atmosphere surprisingly unearthly.



Snowboarding scaleworms (Polynoids)
Scientists hope snowboarding scaleworms will colonise their whale bones

The air was colder and more humid, and the water temperature had dropped by 9°C!

As we had expected and to our great delight, the species were very different from what we saw on the ridge further north.

After a few days of investigations on this site, we went back to the ridge to study a seamount named Coral, also located in the roaring forties.

Like Atlantis seamount, this feature has been set aside on a voluntary basis as a protected area by the Southern Indian Ocean Deepsea Fishers Association.

As its name indicates, deep-sea coral communities are thriving on the seamount, and are thus protected from the potential impact of bottom fishing gear.

We very much look forward to coming back in two years time with the ROV to actually be able to see and film these communities of corals.
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