13.03.2008 - Life in the deep
It is becoming increasingly critical to address the need to learn more about the deep sea ecosystems because fishery technology is also developing and the need for new fisheries is driving expansion into the deep sea. This means that we need to find out what lives there before it is lost forever.
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Eric dos Santos, a masters student in Iceland who is associated with the Vent, Fall and Seep Biota research theme at the Centre, has been working at trying to quantify information about deep sea communities using underwater video material from some of the Centre cruises. Increases in computing power have made it possible to gather extensive high resolution material that in turn facilitates species identification. Use of video / image sampling is especially useful as many deep sea organisms are fragile and would be damaged using traditional sampling methods.
Preliminary conclusions suggest that there may not be high bio-diversity among the visible deep sea organisms, but that this environment is far from being uninhabited. Dos Santos is also working to identify key organisms, analyzing community structure and investigating potential relationships between community structure and depth.
See a poster that dos Santos recently presented.
