Fisheries, environmental, and Indigenous organizations announced the launch of a music video “Guardians of Tariuq” starring school children from Nunavut and celebrating the protection of special places in the deep waters off the coast of Nunavut and Labrador
Continue reading Nunavut kids star in music video to help protect the Arctic
Source: EcoWatch
Author: Nathan Johnson
The deep sea might be cold and dark, but it’s not barren. Down here, an incredible diversity of corals shelters young fish like grouper, snapper and rockfish. Sharks, rays and other species live and feed here their whole lives.
Continue reading Ignoring Deep-Sea Corals Is Risky for the Oceans, and for Us
Source: National Geographic
Author: Sarah Gibbens
The underwater footage shows a rare look at the thriving deep-sea life contained in the Gulf of Mexico’s dark depths.
Continue reading This ‘Secret Garden’ of Coral May Be 1,000 Years Old
Source: Business Insider
Author: Jeremy Berke
Scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conducted an expedition to explore uncharted waters in the deepest parts of the Gulf of Mexico— and they found an astonishing “secret garden” of coral thousands of feet below the surface.
Using a remote-operated submersible (ROV), the researchers came across a vibrant, underwater community of bamboo corals over 7,500 feet down.
“This is a truly magnificent garden of coral fans, I don’t think we’ve seen these densities yet in the Gulf of Mexico,” one of the expedition’s scientists said as the ROV revealed the collection of corals.
For a community of corals this dense to exist in the inky darkness thousands of feet below the sea, a lot of factors need to align, according to NOAA.
Continue reading here.
Source: The Irish Times
Author: Michael Viney
Lophelia pertusa has nothing to with Hamlet’s damsel in the river and is not, for that matter, even Latin. I was once dropped from a “bright” stream in school for my apparent lack of effort with that language, a lacuna (there you are) now sometimes regretted.
Continue reading Protecting cold water corals that support an array of wildlife off our coasts
Source: National Geographic
Author: Liz Langley
If you were a red coral, you’d have enough time to fulfill several bucket lists before you died. Though it’s hard to figure out what you’d put on them.
Continue reading Why This Animal Can Live for Over 500 Years
Source: Mongabay
Author: Basten Gokkon
Scientists have described a new zone in the Caribbean’s deep ocean, shining a light on a little-known world that’s home to numerous previously unidentified reef-fish species.
Continue reading Under the sea: Life is the bubbles in newly described deep-reef zone
Source: The Irish Times
Author: Lorna Siggins
Ireland’s deep-water coral reefs may be changing far more rapidly than previously thought, according to new research by University College Cork(UCC) scientists.
Continue reading Deep-water coral off Irish west coast changing at ‘alarming’ rate
Source: The Irish Times
Author: Michael Viney
About 235km west of my workroom window, give or take a few Atlantic swells and bobbing plastic bottles, the continental shelf off Mayo slopes into the cavernous Rockall Trough.
Continue reading Hubs of deep-water life in need of greater protection
Source: Marine Conservation Institute
Author: Sam Georgian
Seamounts are underwater mountains rising thousands of feet from the bottom of the ocean. Due to their size and shape, seamounts exert a strong influence on local currents that results in nutrient enrichment and increased food supply. As a result, these massive features are often highly productive ‘oases’ in the deep sea, supporting a large diversity of species including functionally important deep-sea corals (Stocks and Hart 2007). Deep-sea corals provide essential habitat structures for a large number of associated organisms, including many commercially important fish. These communities are currently at risk from a number of threats including climate change, oil and gas extraction, and benthic fisheries.
Continue reading Needle in a haystack: identifying vulnerable marine ecosystems in the deep sea
