Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

Sci­en­tists ex­plor­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go’s deep sea say they have be­come the first peo­ple to see vast stretch­es of the coun­try’s un­der­wa­ter land­scape, un­cov­er­ing thriv­ing ecosys­tems, doc­u­ment­ing rare ma­rine life and col­lect­ing spec­i­mens that may rep­re­sent species new to sci­ence.

Just over halfway through the month-long Deep Won­ders of T&T ex­pe­di­tion aboard Schmidt Ocean In­sti­tute’s re­search ves­sel Falkor (too), Chief Sci­en­tist Dr Di­va Amon says the mis­sion has al­ready ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.

“We have been the first peo­ple on the plan­et to see these parts of our coun­try,” Amon said.

“Be­ing able to un­der­stand what is down in the deep sea al­lows us to be able to bet­ter val­ue and al­so stew­ard these places.”

Among the ex­pe­di­tion’s most sig­nif­i­cant dis­cov­er­ies are sev­er­al pre­vi­ous­ly un­doc­u­ment­ed cold seeps, which are rare deep-sea habi­tats where methane and oth­er flu­ids es­cape through the seabed, cre­at­ing oases that sup­port dense ma­rine com­mu­ni­ties.

“They’re like is­lands, like oases on the deep-sea floor with lots and lots and lots of life,” Amon said.

“Mus­sels as far as the eye can see... thou­sands up­on thou­sands up­on thou­sands, like mil­lions of an­i­mals all in a rel­a­tive­ly small area.”

The re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed ve­hi­cle has al­so record­ed flap­jack oc­to­pus­es, goose­fish, gi­ant mus­sels and soft corals, while re­searchers have col­lect­ed sev­er­al spec­i­mens they be­lieve could be new to sci­ence, in­clud­ing a strik­ing pur­ple oc­to­pus.

“It has been like a Dr Seuss book,” Amon said. “An­i­mals of every size and shape and colour and de­scrip­tion all com­ing to­geth­er.”

The dis­cov­er­ies are be­ing sup­port­ed by an un­prece­dent­ed sci­en­tif­ic ef­fort.

Re­searchers have mapped thou­sands of square kilo­me­tres of seafloor, much of it for the first time, while com­plet­ing more than 125 plank­ton tows, col­lect­ing over 50 sed­i­ment cores and car­ry­ing out 15 deep-sea dives that have gen­er­at­ed hun­dreds of hours of im­agery from depths ap­proach­ing four thou­sand me­tres be­low sea lev­el.

“Be­fore this, much of the seafloor had nev­er been mapped,” Amon said. “Those maps will be made open­ly avail­able to any­one. We are chang­ing that.”

The sed­i­ment sam­ples will help sci­en­tists un­der­stand what lies be­neath the seabed, how much car­bon is stored there and whether pol­lu­tion has reached these re­mote en­vi­ron­ments, while mea­sure­ments of tem­per­a­ture, oxy­gen and wa­ter chem­istry will pro­vide one of the most de­tailed snap­shots yet of T&T’s deep ocean.

With the ex­pe­di­tion con­tin­u­ing un­til Ju­ly 28, Amon be­lieves the team’s biggest dis­cov­er­ies may still lie ahead.

“This re­search ex­pe­di­tion has re­al­ly ex­ceed­ed our ex­pec­ta­tions,” she said. “It is cer­tain­ly my wildest dreams com­ing true, and we are just halfway.”