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research.seamounts@pt Gui Menezes DOP/UAç CIÊNCIA 2010 - Encontro com a Ciência em Portugal Centro de Congressos de Lisboa, Junqueira 4-7 de Julho de 2010 1 Seamounts - A seamounts is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor typically formed from volcanoes that does not reach to the water's surface . Normally they occur on deepwaters -These submerged isolated mountains in the sea are hosts to complex and interacting, dynamic physical, chemical, and biological systems. -They normally concentrate special communitties like deep-water corals 2 Seamounts Kitchingman and Lai (2004) identified 14,287 potential large seamounts in the world’s oceans Seamounts that rise 1 km or more above the seafloor may be as many as 100,000. 3 Etnoeyer, Wood and Shirlrey, 2010 Seamounts classification • CenSeam work currently underway (PEW, MCBI,ISA) – Biogeographic region (benthic, bathyal, UNESCO Report) [14 regions] – Depth [3 categories] – Export production at depth [3 categories] – Oxygen level [2 categories] – Distance to nearest neighbour [2 categories] – Globally 195 classes From SAUP 2004 Courtesy: Malcolm Clark, Presentation to ICES Symposium: Issues confronting the Deep Oceans, Horta, Azores, 27-30 April 2009 Seamount research 5 Recent projects Fish demersal cruise surveys – 1995 to present OASIS project – aimed describe the functioning characteristics of seamount ecosystems EVK3-CT-2002-00073-OASIS CONDOR project – aimed to implement a long term observatory on a seamount, EEA Grants, 2008-2011 SEAMOV - PTDC/MAR/108232/2008 - “Seamount fishes: movements, habitat use and connectivity” – 2010-2013 CENSEAM – under the Census of Marine Life (Members of the Steering Committee) CoralFISH - Developing tools for ecosystem management: identification of 6 sensitive and essential preferred fish habitat . 7th FP, EU, 2008-2012 Recent projects CORAZON - Mid-depth benthic communities of conservation importance in the Azores: cold-water coral ecosystems. PTDC/MAR/72169/2006 – 2008-2011 HERMIONE - Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man's Impact on European Seas 2009-2012 CoralChange - Factors controlling carbonate production and destruction of cold-water coral reefs of the NE Atlantic (CoraLab). 7th FP, Marie Curie Grant; individual grant for M. Carreiro-Silva, 2009-2013 TRACE - Cetacean habitat associations in oceanic ecosystems: an integrated approach (PTDC/MAR/74071/2006) 7 Azores – research scenarios Flores Island Hydrothermal vent fields MidAtlantic Ridge Princesa Alice Bank Abyssal plane Azores seamounts - 3.3 peaks of all sizes per 1000 km2 -63 large and 332 small seamount like features in the whole EEZ of the Azores From Morato et al, 2009 9 Demersal and deep-sea fishes research ( to 2100 m depth) Azores: 15 seamounts Madeira: 1seamount Fish surveys have been made using longlines South Smts: 4 seamounts Cape Verde: 2 seamounts 10 Azores - Fish assemblages (1995-2010) Island inner/outer-shelf/softhard bottom Island inner-shelf/hard bottom Shelf shelf-break Bank shallow/Shelf break transition Shelf break transition Surface waters Intermediate upper-slope Upper-slope North Atlantic Central Water (NACW) Intermediate mid-slope 200 - 700 m Mid-slope Mediterranean Water (MW) Deep mid-slope 0 - 200 m 650 - 850 m Deep mid-slope North Atlantic Deep Water (NADW) > 800 m Seamounts are highly vulnerable to industrial fishing Corner Rise Seamounts (North Atlantic) Photo: M. Lewis © CSIRO Marine & Atmospheric Research. Waller et al., 2007 - High impacts in the habitats and fish species - IUU fishing: Ilegal, Not regulated and not reported fishing 12 The Condor seamount research area www.condor-project.org Closed to fishing until 30th April 2012 13 The Condor seamount project - Biodiversity - Oceanography - Microbiology - Ecology - Habitat mapping “..from bacteria to whales...” 14 Condor project - Passive acoustics – Cetaceans Responsibles: Irma cascão, Monica Silva, Rui Prieto Network of Ecological Acoustic Recorders (EAR) 90 seg gravação cada 15 min 4-6 meses colocação Distância (mn) 1 1 2 10:01 2 10:08 02:38 02:46 3 3 4 5 10:18 10:41 4 10:49 5 3 75 150 225 300 375 450 525 600 02:59 Scatter layer Hora do dia 03:22 3 75 150 225 300 375 450 525 600 03:41 Condor project - Acoustic telemetry at Condor Responsible Pedro Afonso • 2 listening receivers (ca. 200 m depth) • april 2008 (Marmac II) & May 2009 (Condor) • Network of acoustic receivers Future developments • Good bathymetric open databases (multibeam) are essential to consolidate and enhance the research strategies for dep-sea ecosystems like seamounts • Potential of seamounts to offer raw-metal resources is high (iron-manganese crusts contain high-tech rare metals such as tellurium, cobalt, zirconium, niobium, tungsten, molybdenum, platinum, titanium,and thorium) • The marine bio-technological potentials (Blue biotechnology) of seamount organsims is promissing and needs to be explored (corals, sponges) • Longterm observations , longterm deployed instrumentation will open a new era on seamount research 17 Future developments • Chemical cues constitute much of the language of life in the sea. They regulate critical aspects of the behavior of marine organisms from bacteria to phytoplankton to benthic invertebrates and water column fishes. These chemically mediated interactions strongly affect population structure, community organization, and ecosystem function.(Mark E. Hay, 2008) • For this we will need new sensors (nano-sensors) to detect specific molecules at very low concentrations • Seamounts are singularities in the ocean, therefore they are excelent scenarios for this studies (“seamount odor plumes”) 18 Other developments future developments Future - More than 99% of all seamounts on Earth remain unexplored, but they can provide exciting research opportunities across many science disciplines - Much of today’s seamount science is done in isolation from other disciplines (seamount chemistry, physics, geology, hydrology, oceanography, biology, and fisheries) – seamount research needs more multidisciplinarity 19 Thanks Images: Courtesy of Peter J. Auster, Alex Rogers, Kristina Gjerde and Eric Heupel Presentation to ICES Symposium: Issues confronting the Deep Oceans, Horta, Azores, 27-30 April 2009