Mainland scientists have made a series of new discoveries in seamounts in the western Pacific Ocean
Seamounts are known as the "great gardens of the seabed", due to special geographical features and hydrological conditions, creating unique biomes and ecosystems, is a colorful marine life gathering place, but also a hot spot for deep-sea biodiversity research.
In recent years, with the support of the special project of scientific and technological basic resources investigation and the special project of strategic science and technology pilot of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xu Kuidong, a researcher at the Institute of Oceanography of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has served as the chief scientist of the marine science comprehensive research vessel "Science", a continental scientific device, for five consecutive times, and has carried out multidisciplinary comprehensive investigations to the seamount organizations in the western Pacific Ocean and obtained a series of new discoveries.
Coral groves on seamounts
According to Xu Kuidong, using the "Science" and its equipped "Discovery" deep-sea robot, the investigation system obtained first-hand data and samples of the environment and biodiversity of 9 seamounts in the western Pacific Ocean, and obtained the understanding of the ecosystem structure of seamounts. Established a large biobank of seamounts with the richest continental species and data, found high diversity, high specificity and low connectivity of seamount organisms in the western Pacific Ocean, and published 1 new subfamilance, 4 new genera and 56 new species of seamounts with the most conservation value of large organisms; Large areas of colorful coral forests have been found on seamounts, revealing the high biomass of seamounts that support oligotrophic waters in the western Pacific Ocean.
The Discovery deep-sea robot is like an undersea sightseeing vehicle, loaded with ultra-high-definition cameras, LED lights and a variety of sensitive probes, which can "live broadcast" what they see and hear along the way. Discovery also carries a variety of equipment for collecting water samples, sediments, rocks and biological samples, and while collecting samples and data, it can carry out in situ scientific experiments on the seabed, realizing the dream of scientists to "move the laboratory to the seabed".
Flycatcher anemone + sponge
Sponge + sea lily
Bamboo hydrangea + sponge + sea lily
On the seamounts it investigated, Discover saw representations of almost all animal phylums, from the most primitive multicellular sponges to the highest mammals. Microorganisms such as bacteria and protozoa cannot be seen with the naked eye, but they often accumulate with tiny materials floating in the ocean, forming "ocean snow" visible to the naked eye, which becomes the main food source for seamount organisms.
"Sea anemones, gorgonian corals, black corals, pillar star flies and other stingrays, glass sponges of different shapes, etc., in the deep and dark seas, these animals are illuminated by LED lights, some like peach blossoms full of trees are blooming, some are like a flowing reed, and some are like a large blooming sunflower, which looks very stunning." Xu Kuidong said.
Golden gorgonian coral
Bamboo hydrangea coral
Hydra coral
Ugly gorgonian coral
The "Great Garden under the sea" also lives with echinoderms such as starfish, snake tails, sea cucumbers, sea urchins, and sea lilies; Bivalves, snails, soot grubs and other mollusks; Crustaceans such as deep-sea shrimp, crabs, hermit crabs, armored shrimp and so on. Common deep-sea fish that are active at the bottom of seamounts, such as sharks, deep-sea dogfish, sea fish, squid, etc., are also beautiful scenery on seamounts.
Although seamounts and land mountains are both "mountains", the reasons for their formation are significantly different. Seamounts are mostly formed by dormant volcanoes, with hard bottoms such as rocks dominated by hard bottoms, and in some areas soft-bottom sediments dominated by foraminifera sand or coral sand. Most of the land mountains are formed by the squeezing and collision of continental plates.
Sponge + deep-sea shrimp
Conger
Cobalt-rich crusts
At the depths of thousands of meters under the sea, why can seamounts become beautiful and rich "big gardens"?
According to Xu Kuidong, this is because seamounts can cause upwelling, and by changing the flow field above the seamount, forming hydrological phenomena such as "Taylor column", which directly or indirectly causes nutrient aggregation above the seamount, improves primary productivity, and makes seamounts have higher biomass than the surrounding deep sea. The "Taylor Column" refers to the circulation formed by stable currents as they flow into seamounts, trapping organisms in seamount areas.
However, not all seamounts have "Taylor's Column". The complex topography, water mass and flow field structure and biological differences of seamounts lead to great differences in the material circulation and energy flow processes of different seamounts.
sea anemone
With the old cave sponge
Sea lily
"There are more than 30,000 seamounts at seafloor heights of more than 1,000 meters in the world, and only about 1% of them have been biologically surveyed, which means that about 99% of seamounts are still little known. At present, the mainland is fully implementing the 'three deep' exploration strategy of deep-earth exploration, deep-sea observation and deep-space earth-to-earth observation, and seamount research has also ushered in new development opportunities, and more and more seamount mysteries will be unveiled. Xu Kuidong said.
Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph