Transcript Condor project

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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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)
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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
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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
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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
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The Condor seamount research area
www.condor-project.org
Closed to fishing until 30th April 2012
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The Condor seamount project
- Biodiversity
- Oceanography
- Microbiology
- Ecology
- Habitat mapping
“..from bacteria to whales...”
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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)
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10:01
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10:08
02:38
02:46
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10:18
10:41
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10:49
5 3
75
150
225
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375
450
525
600
02:59
 Scatter layer
Hora do dia
03:22
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75
150
225
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375
450
525
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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
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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
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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”)
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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
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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