The year 2024 has been a roar of a wave but within this wave has been the discovery of an array of previously unknown and unstudied marine life across the globe.
This January the Schmidt Ocean institute sent a team of scientist lead by Dr. Javier Sellanes in the Falker(too) a research vessel to take on an exploration of underwater mountain ranges off the coast of Chile. The primary goal of the exploration was to study the biodiversity of the seamounts, but in the words of Dr. Sellanes “we far exceeded our hopes of this expedition”.
In under a month of the expedition they, as a team, were able to observe and document nearly one hundred newly discovered deep-sea species. In addition to these discoveries their team of researchers were able to document and collect data on dumbo octopus deep sea jellies and siphonophores, which is an order within hydrozoa, a class of marine organisms within phylum cnidaria a polymorphic and complex marine organism.
Both expeditions carried out in both January and February of salas y Gomez ridge have come back with incredible results.
The expedition came with many new discoveries and amazing data on preexisting and pre know species but according to Schmidt Ocean Institute website they were able to observe and study deep sea corals, glass sponges, amphipods squat lobsters, sea urchins, and some species that as far as we’re concerned are new to science.
It was also determined that each seamount had is own distinct ecosystem, a number of that are vulnerable, many have deep sea coral reefs and sponge gardens.
Marine species weren’t the only discovery that was made on the expedition though. While the team mapped out 52,777 square kilometers of sea floor, they made the discovery of 4 new seamounts in Chile’s water. The fourth mount was being observed for the first time and was unofficially name by the researcher crew, solito, this was the tallest mount standing at 3,530 meters.
The two expeditions cared out between January and April of this year have come with a abundance of new research and discoveries for the Schmidt’s research team. But it has also open the door for much more research and continues more discoveries to come as Schmidt further explores chiles under water mountain ranges.
But as stated by The Schmidt Ocean institute “full species identification can take many years and Dr. Sellanas and his team have an incredible number of samples from this amazingly beautiful and little-known biodiversity hotspot” meaning that yea this expedition has came with tons of new species but non of which can be identified with in this year or maybe the next few years but that didn’t mean the expedition was for not.
The data and samples collected by the researchers is far more valuable then an immediate species identification and the research team is highly impressed and satisfied with the results.
Dr. Sellanes stated “we far exceeded our hopes on this expedition you can always expect to find new species in these remote poorly explored areas but the amount we found, especially for some groups like sponges is mind blowing” which really ties together what this entire expedition was mind blowing with y match amount of discovery and research and everything from seamounts to the ecosystem they provide and with the ongoing research its only going to ten fold.