'We thought we'd just randomise all their surnames and then put those into a taxonomic lotto.' 'On these ships there are a lot of crew members, so as well as around 20 scientists there are typically 20 or 30 other crew members,' says Adrian. So Adrian and his colleagues came up with something of a novel solution. But with so many polychaete worms all from the abyssal depths, this was never going to work. Typically, scientists name new species after what they look like, or where they come from. With the potential for so many new species, naming them becomes something of a problem. We are currently working on three more papers like this.' 'So even though we are quite proud of our 23 new species with 12 new names in this latest paper, it is just a drop in the ocean and we still have a long way to go. 'We now think that just of the polychaetes, which are one of the most abundant components of the fauna, we have maybe 300 new species. ![]() 'We realised straight away while we were still at sea that the sheer number of new species we were going to have to get through was a lot,' explains Adrian. Ranging in size from a few centimetres to a few millimetres, these invertebrates crawl along and through the sediment in even the deepest parts of the oceans. They found a huge number and diversity of marine worms known as polychaetes. When the team started looking through what was coming back to the surface, they knew immediately that the sediments were far more diverse than initially predicted. This means that the ship needs to be able to carry at least 5,000 metres worth of wire. To study the animals on the seafloor, the researchers and crew take a sample of the sediments by lowering a coring device into the deep. The new specimens were collected over two expeditions to the deep waters of the CCZ as part of these baseline surveys. They require anyone who is working in the CCZ to undertake fundamental baseline surveys of the physical, chemical and biological environments. In charge of regulating work in this area is a United Nations body known as the International Seabed Authority. The problems manifest in the fact that very little is known about these environments or what lives there, and so it is difficult to know what impact that mining may have on them. These resources are vital for much of the technology we use on a day-to-day basis, and as the electric vehicles and battery storage industry grows the need for these minerals is only expected to rise. ![]() The seafloor in the CCZ is covered with little potato-sized nodules containing minerals such as cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese. 'It is one of the most poorly sampled bits of the ocean floor,' says Adrian, 'but there has been a resurgence of interest in the area, led by both national governments and industry, who want to explore it for rare minerals.' Averaging a depth of between four and five kilometres the flat, featureless abyssal plain stretches for thousands of kilometres in all directions.īut littering this muddy seafloor is something of increasing significance. ![]() The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) is a vast area in the Pacific Ocean covering some six million square kilometres between the coasts of Hawaii and Mexico. This paper we published is one of a series we're slowly producing.' Mining the depths Maybe higher than that in some instances. 'Over 80% of the animals we bring back up from these abyssal plains are new to science. Now research is showing us that this is far from the case.ĭr Adrian Glover is a deep sea researcher at the Museum and co-author of a paper describing a dozen new species from these depths, published in the journal Zoo Keys. With no light, frigid temperatures and little food making it from the surface thousands of metres above, it has long been thought that these plains were effectively lifeless. While this environment contains rocky mounts, canyons and hydrothermal vents, the majority is made up of the endless, muddy abyssal plains. Thought to cover some 60% of the Earth's surface, it is the largest single environment on the planet. The deep sea is defined as any part of the ocean that is deeper that 1,000 metres, and it is vast.
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