[Music] Millions of people live along the North Atlantic and we
use the North Atlantic Ocean for so many things:
Seafood resources, climate regulation, trade, and transit; the North Atlantic
Ocean plays a pivotal role in our daily lives. But we've just only begun to look
at and to understand the ecosystems and the deep-sea resources that exist in those areas.
Back in 2016, we started looking at the map and trying to figure out where could exploration in
the Atlantic Ocean be most useful, where were the big gaps. All that became the foundation for the
Atlantic Seafloor Partnership for Integrative Research and Exploration or "ASPIRE." [Music]
Led by NOAA Ocean Exploration, ASPIRE is not only a collaboration across NOAA, but it's also
a collaborative effort with a number of our other Federal partners like the U.S. Geological Survey
and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, as well as international partners from Canada and Europe.
"We here in Canada have a number of canyon ecosystems but the majority of them on the
Atlantic Coast haven't been fully explored. [Music] On the NOAA mission we explored a
completely different area that we had never been to and the diversity of the benthic fauna in this
area was completely overwhelming and exciting. It was something that we didn't know would be there."
"All this information is being used to inform the regional government of the Azores,
ending the designation of new Marine Protected Areas. The aim of the regional government is to
protect 30% of the E.E.Z. by 2023, so all this information is extremely valuable to
inform those decisions." [Music] One of the biggest accomplishments from ASPIRE
has to be the work that was done in the Blake Plateau. Not only can I now say
that we have closed the gaps in bathymetry in that area, but we've also revealed one of the
largest deep-sea coral and sponge habitats that have been found globally to date.
"They grow a third of a centimeter a year to a centimeter a year,
which is about the length of your pinky nail. That means a one-meter-tall coral is about a
thousand years old, to give you an idea how old and precious and sensitive these reefs are."
Efforts like this are greater than sum of their parts. Together we can
hopefully change our understanding of how the Atlantic is connected. [Music]