WEBVTT

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Vast areas of the deep Pacific are
targeted for seafloor mining. Yes these

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are some of the most poorly explored
habitats on the planet. The life of the

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abyssal seafloor, depths of 5,000 meters
are about three miles, is weird and

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wonderful there are animals with novel
adaptations, sailing sea cucumbers,

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predacious sponges. Yet most of these
species have never been collected and are

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new to science. One of our main project
goals is to explore the biodiversity of

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this region to understand how these they
will be impacted by mining activities

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and in particular to assess how areas
set aside from mining protected from

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mining our adequate to preserve the
biodiversity of this vast region.

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Why do people care about mining in the deep seafloor, well it's covered in some areas

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with black potato sized structures that
are full of valuable minerals, nickel,

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copper, cobalt, rare earth elements that
we need to make cell phones and the

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supplies of the minerals in these
nodules are enormous a world's supply

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for many decades of many of these
essential metals.

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One important element of this project is
to evaluate the extent to which

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communities on seamounts or at shallower depths in within each no mining zone can

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serve as sources of larvae to recolonize
communities on the abyssal plain and so

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that's one of the important routes for
re-establishment of these communities

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after after mining and so one aspect
we've been doing is sampling larvae and

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also looking at connectivity and species
overlap between communities these

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distinct habitats. At depths of 4,000 to
5,000 meters or about 2 to 3 miles the

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deep ocean is extremely difficult to
sample it's a very remote habitat we're

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using a variety of state-of-the-art
techniques such as benthic landers and

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remotely operated vehicles.

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A real technological workhorse of our
project is the remotely operated vehicle

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Lulu Kai this goes descends to the
bottom of the ocean with video cameras

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and manipulators and collects the
animals that we need to study as well as

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the sediment samples that contain the
diverse microbes.

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Among the most numerous and diverse
inhabitants of the deep sea are

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microorganisms yet they're chronically
difficult to study the approach that we

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are taking for this project is to study
their genetic blueprint in order to

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better understand some of the ways that
they obtain energy and recycled material

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in the deep sea.

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The remotely operated vehicle is a
marvelous tool because it allows you to

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target individual organisms slurp them
up into a chamber undamaged or pick up

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sea cucumbers very gently with its
manipulator and drop it into a box. We're

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able to collect all kinds of animals
that have never been collected before in

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this part of the ocean.

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Although we're sampling microbes and taking lots of animal samples

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to look at what is there
what species are there we're also trying

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to ask questions about what are the
animals and the microbes actually doing

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in the sediments and for this we're
using seafloor landers, benthic chamber

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landers and also what are called micro
profiling Landers and these allow us to

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measure respiration rates see how much
the animals and the microbes are

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breathing at the sea floor and also
allow us to track how much food they

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process at the sea floor that we can
then compare to other areas and build up

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an idea of how their ecosystem is
functioning. Baited cameras are a very

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useful tool to sample the mobile top
predators in in these ecosystems so here

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we have one of the most common animals
in the deep sea a rat tail fish that

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have long tapering tails that
some early scientists thought looked

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like a rat's tail. At the seamounts we
found swarms of eels a species that were

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not sure of just yet these are animals
that are akin to lions and cheetahs on

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the plains of Africa but because these
these animals such as rat tails and eels

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because they're so mobile oftentimes
they avoid the ROV so the baited camera

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system gives us a tool to attract them
right in front both of our instruments

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to census them.

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so often with the natural resource
management we end up chasing our tail

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the activity starts and then we come up
with a plan for how to manage it and how

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to conserve the resource this has
happened with fisheries that's happened

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with mining on land and it's very
unusual here because these reserves have

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been set up before the deep-sea mining
has begun. So we hope through our

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research to evaluate whether these
reserves are adequate preservation areas

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for the region