By Megan Cook
The ocean is home to many of the wonders of our planet – 72% of them to be exact. The deepest valleys, highest peaks, largest plains, and largest animal to ever live are all in our salty blue backyard right now. There are also mountains underwater – lots of mountains! Vast ridgelines peel around the world like zippers closing the boundaries of our ocean plates, and tens of thousands of seamounts dot the seafloor. Seamounts are isolated mountains, either active or extinct volcanoes jutting up from the seafloor, building some of the most unique and poorly understood ecosystems on our planet.
Rising sometimes miles off the seafloor, seamounts are hotspots for biodiversity in our oceans.  In the same way the world’s largest ball of yarn becomes a worthy detour to disrupt the monotony of a Midwestern road trip, the variation in topography and habitat structure of a seamount attracts life.…