Ever wonder what the seafloor of the Galápagos looks like? What goes on below the surface around the magnificent cluster of islands that Darwin’s finches and those wonderful giant tortoises call home? Our partners at the Khaled Bin Sultan Living Oceans Foundation went to find out, and the results have captured our imagination.
Using an innovative high-resolution seafloor habitat mapping technique, researchers from the Living Oceans Foundation (KSLOF) and the National Coral Reef Institute at Nova Southeastern University collected hundreds of underwater videos and over one million depth readings around Baltra, Darwin, Floreana, Isabela, Marchena, Urvina, and Wolf Islands in June 2012 as part of the six-year KSLOF Global Reef Expedition.
Using a method of collecting shallow water surveys called “groundtruthing,” the team covered over 750 square kilometers of seafloor around the Galápagos.…