Corals on Debus Simont at a submerged camp more than 2,000 meters above the surface in the North Pacific Ocean
© NOAA Office of Ocean Research and Exploration
By Ian Morse
Aiming to increase defenses on the high seas, a team of marine researchers today released the first comprehensive survey of coral reefs in the ocean’s rough seas, covering about two-thirds of the ocean outside national jurisdiction.
After encountering more than half a million observations of reef-building corals, the team identified 116 reefs located in the high seas. Most of these corals live between 200 and 1200 meters below the surface, the researchers found. But a handful of eggs are found more than 2 kilometers away. The authors note that surveys generally preferred corals near shore.
The study coincides with the launch of coral reefs on the High Sea Coalition, a group of scientists and nonprofits aiming to support a research cruise to survey deep-sea, cold-water ops where many rocks are sitting. Ultimately, the alliance hopes the data will help policymakers understand that these poorly understood ecosystems will help provide more protection in the global agreements currently under negotiation.
“Some of the first marine protected areas were built exclusively around coral reefs. “Much of the literature suggests that these are ocean rainforests,” says Daniel Wagner, co-author of the coalition’s coordinator and conservation international’s ocean technical adviser. The nonprofit coalition hopes to influence the implementation of the UN treaty, the intergovernmental conference on marine biodiversity in areas beyond the national jurisdiction, which is expected to determine the rules for establishing maritime conservation on the high seas. (The final meeting of negotiations scheduled earlier this year was postponed due to the COVID-19 epidemic.)
The Coalition notes that ocean deep rocks are “some of the most surveyed of all ocean ecosystems, and because they are not protected by the laws of any country, they are among the most sensitive and potentially over-exploited reefs on Earth.”
Studies suggest that scientists have learned a lot about corals off the coast. All records of high sea corals were scleractin, a common family of hard, rock-formed corals, and some were found much deeper than where they are commonly found. Most of the rocks were found on seagulls, escarpments, and submarine belts in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, with a small minority in the Indian Ocean.
This study also points to the need to coordinate the defenses arising from human activities at sea. It has been found that only one-fifth of the known rocks in the deep ocean are protected from bottom-catching fish, and none are protected from the various effects of conduction. A well-known reef already exists in an area protected by the Seabed Mining Regulatory International Seabed Authority, and is close to two active mining research agreements.
Campaign challenges
The Coalition is scrambling to gather more information on the high seas, but epidemic sanctions delayed the start of its first two campaigns in early 2022. The first expedition was to sail to the shores of Rapa Nui, or Easter Island, later this year. Chile. Simmons come into the national waters of Chile, and are already included in the national maritime reserve. But expression leader Richard Pyle, an ecologist at the Bishop Museum, known for his work on obscure mesopotic reefs, expects the conditions to be representative of high-altitude coral reefs, and could support a legal argument for marine reserve conservation.
The second expedition will explore a number of slides along the coast of Salas y Gomez, Nazca and Juan Fernandez, connected to Chile. Cruise leader Tina Molodtsova, a senior scientist at the PP Shirshov Institute of Psychology, says Undersea World is “very special in terms of biography.” Two decades ago, the journey of animals documented in this area, which is not found anywhere else. She expects to “see what they call the deep sea ‘coral gardens”, which include bamboo shoots and glass sponges, with a glass-like structure made of silica.
High sea travel is not cheap, costing 1 million each. So, for the moment, the coalition has set a more modest goal over the next few years to raise policy policy 3 million for pilot surveys of some of the targets and to fund the films to give policymakers on-screen. The immediate goal, Wagner says, is to collect “a kind of snapshot.” We’re trying to get there, and then pass that information on quickly to policymakers. “
For Pyle, one of the goals of such campaigns is to document the seamont ecosystems before human activities force them, “We knew before they were who they are, what they mean, and what role they play in the bigger picture.”
