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UCSB Teams to Study Largest Undersea Canyons
updated: Mar 21, 2012, 3:09 PM

Source: UCSB

A research collaboration involving UC Santa Barbara, Greenpeace, and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has documented abundant corals in the world's largest underwater canyons in Alaska's Bering Sea, and demonstrated their use as a habitat for fish.

It also identified several long-lived coral species not previously thought to exist in the Bering Sea, and yielded the discovery of an entirely new sponge, which was given the name Aaptos kanuux - the Aleut word for heart - symbolizing a view of the canyons as the heart of the Bering Sea. The findings appear today in PLoS ONE, a scientific journal published by the Public Library of Science.

The research also found evidence of disturbance to seafloor habitats and damage to corals from ongoing fishing activities. NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service estimated that 82 metric tons of coral are removed from the sea floor off Alaska each year by commercial fishing.

"Although it's becoming more common for scientists and fishery managers to work with fishermen and other stakeholders, collaborations with environmentalists are rare," said Robert Miller, a research biologist at UCSB and the paper's lead author.

Researchers surveyed the sea floor in the enormous and virtually unexplored Bering Sea Canyons using DeepWorker submersibles - small, single-pilot submarines equipped with high-definition video cameras - powerful lights, indexing lasers, and robotic sampling arms that allowed scientists to document the rich habitat and diverse marine life thriving in the canyon depths.

Using computer software and algorithms developed by UCSB's Center for Bio- image Informatics, more than 3,200 video frames from 16 dives were analyzed. The research findings provide evidence of higher densities of coral in the canyons than in most areas surveyed in the North Pacific outside the Aleutian Archipelago, and, notably, illustrate coral's important role as habitat for commercially valuable fishes in some of America's most productive fishing grounds.

"This study shows that fishes associated with corals as much as they did with other forms of structure, such as boulders," said Miller. "In the deep sea, larger physical structures like corals are rare, and corals can be very important in providing a more complex habitat that supports more species than flat bottom."

Nutrient-rich currents flow from the canyon depths up to the continental shelf, fueling phytoplankton blooms that support a multitude of marine life, including marine mammals and seabirds, Miller noted. The slow-growing corals and sponges on the bottom likely depend on this phytoplankton for food.

"This study provided much-needed information on deep-sea coral and sponge habitat in the one area of Alaska where we had virtually no observations," said Bob Stone, a biologist with NOAA's Auke Bay Lab. "Contrary to expectations based on available evidence, the canyons do support areas of coral habitat that deserve attention, especially given the apparent lack of otherwise structured habitat in the canyons and the fact that these are the most northerly known coral assemblages of their kind in the North Pacific."

"This research has huge implications for the future of the canyons and for fisheries," said John Hocevar, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner and the paper's second lead author. "The world's largest underwater canyons need a measure of protection from the world's largest fishery, and, hopefully, what we've learned using the world's smallest submarines will help get it done."

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Comments in order of when they were received | (reverse order)

COMMENT 266283	2012-03-21 04:22 PM
Funny how the Sponges.... found Sponges! Is there anyway for Taxpayers to have some kind of input on what our un-ellected, taxpayer funded agencies are doing?....i bet the overwhelming majority would not want them in a little submarine looking for sponges....where there's not even supposed to be sponges! geez! A huge percentage of our fish comes from Alaska, and prices are already very steep, so in the best interest of National Healthcare...let the healthy fish be as affordable as possible!...and when fisheries get low...the weaker fishermen will move on...problem solved!
COMMENT 266290	2012-03-21 04:38 PM
@283 And then when we've overfished the oceans and the populations die out...? Will we go fishing for spacefish? Conservation is important, no resource is infinite.
COMMENT 266292	2012-03-21 04:42 PM
Apparently the sponges are coming to the surface and writing comments... Interesting study. It's a shame how bottom trawling destroys corals that are hundreds of years old. Hook and line is the way to go.
COMMENT 266311	2012-03-21 05:51 PM
If you believe that a well rounded conclusion could be made with 3,200 video frames from 16 dives...you should not be endorsing things....you're dangerous! Fortunately, i'm not! and when i think of all the families and business that could be affected by even more regulation in the name of saving a sponge that no one even knew existed... i feel the need to say something. Instead of limiting fish counts, they need start implementing Marine Biology Majors limits! Clearly not "SUSTAINABLE"
JOJOFLYS	2012-03-21 07:05 PM
What is dangerous is the number of people in our country who think that knowledge and education are bad.
COMMENT 266335	2012-03-21 07:20 PM
ignorance is what's not sustainable 283. Maybe you have more akin with the dinosaurs than you realize.
COMMENT 266353	2012-03-21 08:48 PM
283 - Sustainability looks at seven generations ahead. What are you leaving for your children's children's children? (And then some). There is always a way to provide for a family in the immediate future, but especially if you are a family raising children, your eyes and awareness should always be toward the future.
COMMENT 266359	2012-03-21 09:11 PM
This is a fascinating study and makes it even more critical that extensive and intensive studies be done of the northern seas now beginning to be open due to global warming. Imagine the devastation of an oil spill! 100% AGREE with JOJOFLYS. It's really quite frightening --- and speaks, no, shouts about the condition of our educational system.
COMMENT 266436P	2012-03-22 09:30 AM
Remember our educational system produced the people doing the NOAA study, so don't get too upset about our educational system yet. It just don't work for everyone. This study is trying to preserve these fisheries, not the sponges. The new sponge was an interesting extra. The meat of the article is that commercially important fish thrive with these corals so keeping the corals around is a good idea for the fishermen. Duh. The fishermen will "move on"? Hop on up to Ft. Bragg, California, where my brother lives, and tell that to the salmon fishermen up there who had their fishery closed for three years because... no salmon! And not because of overfishing, but because of spawning problems in rivers all over California. The fishermen I know were upset, of course, but didn't oppose the moratorium because they knew--who knows better?--they needed to give the fish time to repopulate. But many ("weaker"?) lost or came close to losing their boats. The way taxpayers have input is through their elected officials, who approve the funding for these agencies and their research. There are many good opportunities right now: go vote for a tea-partier who wants funding only for war and regulating pelvic exams, and that can be your input against scientific research.
COMMENT 266501	2012-03-22 02:26 PM
Nowhere did I see how much this cost the taxpayers of the U.S. Let's be generous and say it cost a million bucks. In a nation with over 300 million people, that amounts to about one-third of a cent per capita. Anyone aggrieved by this expenditure can petition for their one-third of a penny back. Heck, I'll give you a whole penny just to go away and stew quietly.
COMMENT 266519	2012-03-22 03:02 PM
I think somebody's got a case of "Coral Envy" Go to Hawaii if you want coral and sponges!

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