SEAMOUNTS REVEAL HUGE REPOSITORY OF UNDISCOVERED LIFE

08-29-03

By David Stauth, 541-737-0787
SOURCE: George Boehlert, 541-867-0211

NEWPORT - A treasure trove of unknown fish and other marine species is blanketing the 30,000 seamounts of the world, researchers say, sometimes comprising up to 40 percent of the life forms found on these remote, undersea mountains that remain some of the least explored areas on Earth.

Researchers at OSU who helped organize a recent conference on seamounts say that scientists are just coming to understand the incredible diversity of life found on these large undersea volcanoes. Click on image to go to downloadable photo

The enormous wealth of undiscovered sea life, biodiversity, geological features and other oddities that exist on the flanks of these towering subsea peaks - areas that have been called the "lost worlds" of the oceans - merits a much larger and more comprehensive program of research than has been done so far, researchers concluded last week at an international conference held at Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center.

More funding, coordinated biological and geological research programs, and eventually efforts to protect these unique marine areas may all emerge from the planning efforts made at this conference, said George Boehlert, an OSU professor, director of the Hatfield Center and a co-organizer of the meeting, along with Karen Stocks, an oceanographer at the University of California, San Diego. The event, supported by the Census of Marine Life, attracted 30 of the world's leading experts on seamounts.

"We've been going to different seamounts off and on for the past 50 years, but we still know next to nothing about a range of scientific questions," Boehlert said. "We find something totally unexpected virtually every time we do research at a new site. Just in the past few years have scientists begun to understand how many unique life forms reside on the seamounts."

Seamounts are large mountains, usually formed by ancient volcanic action, that carpet many areas of the Atlantic and especially the more geologically-active Pacific Ocean. Many are isolated, but sometimes they literally form undersea mountain ranges, and in a few instances - such as the Hawaiian Islands or the myriad islands of the South Pacific - manage to poke above the sea. More often, the vast depths of the oceans confine these mountains to a deep, dark and largely unexplored existence far beneath the ocean surface. Only a few hundred have been visited at all, perhaps 1 percent of the total.

But on their flanks, researchers have learned, are often an amazing number and variety of fish, corals, deep-water mussels, red squid, sea spiders, sponges and other species, many of which have evolved to thrive at great depths, enormous pressures, or in very narrow temperature ranges, fed by unusual food chain dynamics that may be unique to seamounts. These isolated fountains of evolution are literally giving birth to many of the marine world's newest species.

Some fish grow very slowly and may live to be more than 100 years old, and corals can survive for centuries. But the ecology of many species is so fragile and site-specific that they are rarely, if ever, found in other locations.

The recent meeting at OSU was part of an ongoing program called the Census of Marine Life, a collaboration of 45 countries to develop a framework to study marine life forms across a huge geographic area. An interim report from that group is expected in October, and further progress was made this month in outlining research plans for the future.

Among the conclusions of the group were:

• More needs to be learned about the diversity, abundance, evolution, community structure, and reaction to disturbance of many of the species on the seamounts.

• More needs to be learned about the diversity, abundance, evolution, community structure, and reaction to disturbance of many of the species on the seamounts.

• Further understanding is needed of the role of seamounts in the biology, productivity and evolution of marine life forms elsewhere in the world's oceans.

• How do the physical features of seamounts influence the life forms that live there, how are these populations sustained and how vulnerable are they to disturbance?

• Expanded data analysis, field sampling, and public outreach efforts are all necessary.

• The role of seamounts as "stepping stones" for dispersal of unique species throughout the world's oceans needs to be explored.

• There is significant concern about increasing disruption of seamount ecology by ocean fishing and trawling vessels that can cause damage in minutes to undersea terrain that may take decades to repair.

The researchers concluded that a five- to seven-year international research effort must be coordinated among many nations, involving geneticists, taxonomists, population biologists, fisheries biologists, physical oceanographers, geologists, and other experts to address many of these questions.

The meetings at OSU also included a separate workshop on the life forms found in abyssal canyons and deep-sea sediments, which, like seamounts, are poorly understood and also require much additional study.

"We're actually at a point now where we should be able to make pretty good progress with some of these issues in coming years," Boehlert said. "There are a lot of logistical challenges, not the least of which is the huge expense of studying these incredibly remote locations in the middle of the ocean.

"But there appears to be a developing consensus about the work that needs to be done, and a better understanding of just how biologically special and unique are many of these seamounts and other unexplored areas of the sea."

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