An international group of scientists has discovered what are believed to be more than 100 new species living on seamounts off the coast of Chile.
From deep-sea corals to glass sponges, sea urchins, amphipods and squat lobsters, the scientists say these discoveries from a recent Schmidt Ocean expedition could be contributing to new science.
Erin Easton, an assistant professor at University of Texas Rio Grande Valley who was involved in the expedition, said scientists collected specimens from the Nazca Ridge and Salas y Gomez Ridge — two underwater mountain chains that stretch across 2,900 kilometers (1,800 miles) in the southeastern Pacific — as well as from the Juan Fernandez ridge, located on the Nazca Plate off the west coast of South America.
“We want to look to see if we can identify how those benthic or seafloor communities of animals change with depth and among the different seamounts,” said Easton. “And we were looking to see … if each community of the seamount was distinct or if they were similar, so that we can inform conservation management decisions.”
Descending into the deep ocean, the scientists used an underwater robot to explore seamounts along the Nazca and Salas y Gomez Ridge.
They hope this data can support the designation of an international high-seas marine protected area.
“On this expedition, we were able to observe over 150 species that have not been reported for the region, and we believe potentially 100 or more of those are new species to science. We observed these large urchins called cactus urchins. There they were quite tall,” about a half meter, Easton said.
“We observed forests of corals, so we saw a forest of bamboo corals that were probably thousands of years old. We also saw many other species of corals that were probably on the order of thousands of years old,” she said.
The scientists also mapped 52,777 square kilometers of seafloor.
Jyotika Virmani, executive director at Schmidt Ocean Institute, said, “There’s a lot of areas of the world that have never been seen and never been mapped. So, in addition to the new species, they [scientists] discovered four new seamounts as well, which are basically underwater mountains.”
“This part of the world is important because of its biodiversity and also because it’s a very interesting geological region,” said Virmani. “It’s the meeting of a number of plates, tectonic plates.”
