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New Habitats and Human Impacts Discovered in the Deep Sea Surrounding West Coast Marine Sanctuaries

By Courtney Mattison
The National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS) recently teamed up with Deep Ocean Exploration and Research and other partners to explore the depths of the proposed expansion areas of the Cordell Bank and Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuaries. With the goal of gaining a basic understanding of new species and habitats that may soon be included in the sanctuaries, this team of scientists and remotely operated vehicle (ROV) technicians explored depths up to 300 meters (984 feet) in Bodega Canyon and surrounding areas.
The ROV was equipped with a video camera that allowed researchers to observe a variety of interesting invertebrates and fish including sea whip corals, rock prawns and flatfish. Among the team’s exciting discoveries was a catshark and skate nursery near Bodega Canyon that consisted of several clusters of eggs on the seafloor.…

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Summits for Science: Young Explorer Invites You to Seamounts of Anegada Passage

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.…

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DOER’s Sub-Ice Rover Tested in Tahoe

It almost feels like science fiction: a 28-foot long, 2,200-pound robotic submarine that can fit through a 30-inch ice borehole. But observers in Tahoe this past week can attest to the realness — and world-class engineering — of the Sub-Ice Rover (SIR) created by DOER Marine of Alameda for North Illinois University. The craft is designed to explore the ocean underneath the half mile of frozen water known as the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. To clear the borehole, SIR is designed to collapse to a diameter less than 30 inches. 

Once beneath the ice, SIR expands and produces an array of high tech sensors and cameras which blast terabytes of data up the 2-mile cable to the control center. These instruments will ultimately seek to collect data about ice melt beneath the Ross Ice Shelf to better understand conditions at the interface between seawater and the base of the glacial ice, as well as investigate the sea floor and layers of sediment beneath. …

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