This, as in the case of the viper fish, gives them a sinister appearance. At a depth of 10,000 metres, up to a tonne of weight rests on every square centimetre of a living creature. The deep-sea is virtually inaccessible to humans and therefore largely unexplored. We even know more about the surface of the moon than about life in the dark expanses of the oceans. Pictures of deep-sea inhabitants provide us a glimpse of a fascinating world.
The family are named for shallow-living relatives that stick to rocks via a disk on their belly, curling up like a snail. The discovery of these three snailfishes, new to science, demonstrates how understudied the deep-sea ecosystems remain and the high biodiversity of the deep ocean, Earth’s largest habitat. Resource hunters will want to exploit the mineral rich black smokers in the future. Other reasons for the protection of these ecosystems are the increasing dive tourism, the deep sea fisheries and the increasing interest of scientists in hydrothermal vents. In the protection framework of the hydrothermal vents the WWF called the act a “gift to the earth”, a necessary global action of future environmental protection. The small island republic has followed this request and has protected their black smokers.
Many theories on the purpose of bioluminescence have been put forward, but it is still not fully understood. Scientists think that light might help species communicate, attract a mate or prey, or deter predators. Many deep-sea organisms have developed very large rudimentary eyes to maximize their ability to see this chemical light, like some of the shrimp collected in our rock dredges. A siphonophore, these animals are made up of multiple units, each specialized for a function like swimming, feeding, or reproduction. This “modular” construction allows some siphonophores to grow very large, over 100 feet in the deep ocean.
- Experiments have revealed how quickly and efficiently bits of food that sink to the seafloor are put to use.
- Global warming, especially in the plain Polar Regions where vast amounts are held in Alaska, Greenland, Canada, Russia and Antarctica, would have devastating effects.
- In the surface waters, marine plants called phytoplankton use the sunlight to grow by photosynthesis.
- It is hard to imagine a more hostile environment than this icy cold, pitch black, crushing ecosystem of the deep ocean.
- Corals were once thought to only inhabit the warm, shallow waters of tropical and subtropical regions, but now we find that they’ve been thriving in dark, cold waters for millions of years.
The deep sea is the largest habitat on Earth.
- The alteration of the seafloor will affect the chemical conditions, a new redox system would develop and an additional adsorption and mobilisation of trace elements or heavy metals becomes possible.
- As the sun sets, fish and zooplankton make massive migrations from the depths up to the ocean’s surface.
- For the first month or so that a whale carcass is on the seafloor it is a buffet for scavengers from afar.
- To identify the new species, the research team used a variety of methods, ranging from CT scans to genetic analysis, to distinguish them from the other snailfish species.
- A canyon acts like a funnel in the ocean, congregating decaying matter that originates from land down to the ocean depths.
It has a more compressed body and an angled jaw, is mostly black, but does not have a disk on its belly. Scientists aren’t sure yet how common these species are, but so far it appears that the Deep Sea bumpy snailfish may be the rarest. This particular encounter with the bumpy snailfish is the only confirmed observation of the species, the researchers said. The intention is to continue searching for more to understand these species’ geographic distribution. Although features vary among the 400 known species, they’re typically small, tadpole-shaped, and sport large, jelly-like heads. A disk on their belly allows them to either stick to the seafloor or “hitchhike on larger animals,” according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).
THREE WAYS YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE DEEP SEA
They use this feature to attract males, but also (and especially) prey species. For much of the deep ocean, food rains down from above in the form of marine snow. The term ‘marine snow’ is used for all sorts of things in the ocean that start at the top or middle layers of water and slowly drift to the seafloor. This mostly includes waste, such as dead and decomposing animals, poop, silt and other organic items washed into the sea from land. A cold seep is a place on the ocean floor where fluids and gases trapped deep in the earth percolate up to the seafloor.
HYDROTHERMAL VENTS AND COLD SEEPS
They are found in temperate and tropical oceans worldwide at depths between 500 to 5,000m. It is naturally well-camouflaged with a dark black/brown colouration and has a distinctive armoured head. Giant isopods are important scavengers in the deep-sea benthic environment. They are mostly carnivorous and feed on carcasses of whales, fish, and squid; they may also prey on slow-moving animals and are known to attack trawl catches. These giant shrimp are common in the deep North Atlantic waters, particularly the Porcupine Abyssal Plain.
It’s a world few will ever see, but it holds ancient knowledge, remarkable biodiversity and plays a critical role in the health of our ocean, our climate, and our future. They also sequenced the DNA of the fish to compare them to other snailfishes and position the new species within an evolutionary context. The deep ocean is defined as the sea and seabed below 200m because this is where light fades. It makes up 90% of the Earth’s marine environment and is the largest biome (community of plants and animals living together in a particular climate) on the planet (DSCC, n.d.).
Meet the Deep
Submarines had been used in the past, however in 1930 the two Americans William Beebe and Otis Barton were the first to see the deep sea with their own eyes. Enclosed in a cold steel ball (the bathysphere) they were lowered to 427,8 m by a rope – deeper than anyone had previously been. “Shrimp and jellyfish drifted past us like flakes of unknown snowstorms” is how Beebe described the first impressions of the deep sea.
Keep one eye out for Bonnelli’s cock-eyed, which clearly have one eye much bigger than the other. If disturbed, it will curl its arms up outwards and wrap them around its body, almost turning itself inside-out and, exposing spiny projections called cirri. They also have amazing bioluminescent displays with light organs on the tip of each arm and at the base of each fin. When disturbed, these can glow and pulse and the arms may writhe so that it becomes very difficult to tell one end of the vampire squid from the other. The literal translation of the Latin species name is ‘vampire squid from Hell’, a name inspired by its velvety jet-black to pale reddish cloak-like webbing and red eyes.
Still, the deep-sea remains one of the least explored regions on planet Earth.47 Pressures even in the mesopelagic become too great for traditional exploration methods, demanding alternative approaches for deep-sea research. Baited camera stations, small crewed submersibles, and ROVs (remotely operated vehicles) are three methods utilized to explore the ocean’s depths. Because of the difficulty and cost of exploring this zone, current knowledge is limited. Pressure increases at approximately one atmosphere for every 10 meters meaning that some areas of the deep sea can reach pressures of above 1,000 atmospheres. Natural light does not penetrate the deep ocean, with the exception of the upper parts of the mesopelagic. Except for the areas close to the hydrothermal vents, this energy comes from organic material drifting down from the photic zone.
“Tell it I say pspsps or whatever that translates to in fish,” another TikTok user humorously commented, referring to the sound that pet parents make to attract the attention of companion animals. For additional information or images relating to this article, please email Deep-sea coral and sponge communities are largely untapped sources of natural products with enormous potential as pharmaceuticals, enzymes, pesticides, cosmetics and other commercial products (DSCC, n.d.). Anticipating vulnerabilities and defining efficient protection measures is a crucial issue, while many climate emergencies tend to leave behind this remarkable heritage, invisible to most of us. Seamounts are highly endemic regions, which means that species that are found here cannot be found elsewhere.
This means the “deep” is the part of our ocean that is dark, cold, food-poor, subject to intense pressure, and typically deeper than 200 meters. Carbon is stored in rocks, the atmosphere, soils and plants – and the ocean. Carbon in phytoplankton is incorporated in marine sediments as the organisms die and sink to the seabed, and then, over millennia, the carbon becomes stored in rocks. The abyssal plains of the seabed are the flattest places on earth – because they are vast accumulations of carbon-rich sediment, sometimes over 5km thick, covering the rock below. Ocean sediments cover 70% of the planet’s surface, forming the substrate for the largest ecosystem on Earth and its largest carbon reservoir (Dutkiewicz et al., 2015). The fishing at the far away deep sea locations is often the only way for fishermen from different waters to make back the money they had to invest in the boats and their equipment.
Due to the methodological difficulties and the technological requirements it will, however, probably be years, if not decades, until the industrial extraction of gas hydrates becomes possible. The Porcupine Abyssal Plain deep sea region in the North-western Atlantic (-48° 50’ N, 16° 30’ W, at depths of about 4,850 m), in which British and European studies are being conducted. The increased ship traffic and the use of steam engines led to a steady widening of the spectrum of ocean expeditions in the early years of the 20th century. The first expeditions into the ice were made to look for ice-free passageways. After the Titanic sank the German physicist Alexander Behm developed the echo sounder in 1912, through which one could now measure the ocean depth via wave refraction.
