Remote seamounts in the southeast Pacific may be home to 20 new species

Some 1,400 kilometers off the coast of Chile, infrequent deep-sea creatures waft alongside a garden of sponges and corals that develop alongside the flanks of a three,100-meter-tall undersea mountain.

A monthlong survey of mountain ecosystems interior the far flung seas of the southeastern Pacific Ocean has now now not best turned up a never-beforehand than-viewed seamount but additionally revealed many species of sea existence per risk new to science. Eighty species were determined all through this factor of the ocean for the imperative time, the Schmidt Ocean Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., announced August 28 in a recordsdata launch.

The seamount discovery grew to end as much as be a surprise, says oceanographer Jyotika Virmani, executive director of the institute. Satellite imaging of the local had shown best a low-resolution bump on the seafloor. The mammoth seamount is fantastically a superior collection of meters serious, with a summit that sits 994 meters lower than the ocean ground.

By reason of a diving robot to film and explore the brand new seamount plus 9 others, expedition researchers determined a teeming ecosystem, inclusive of a garden of sponges and ancient corals about twice the breadth of a basketball courtroom. The garden isn’t as dense as shallow water reefs, Virmani says, which are “definitely chockablock with corals,” but nonetheless fantastic for this sort of deep water reef (SN: 10/26/23).

The robot encountered the ghostly white Casper octopus, named for its uncanny resemblance to the caricature specter Casper the Pleasant Ghost. The species has but to be formally described by method of scientists, and within the previous grew to end as much as be time-honored best from the North Pacific.

The workforce also gathered the imperative-ever footage of a living Promachoteuthis squid. “It’s been delivered up in nets,” Virmani says. “But they’ve never been living samples.”

Twenty of the encountered animal species may fantastic be new to science and determined best on the summits of their dwelling seamounts, adding to one hundred fifty potential new species from two prior expeditions. The animals encompass sea anemones, urchins, shrimp and a squat lobster. The workforce also determined a fossil so that it will fantastic be from a brand new species of ancient whale, Virmani says, but this has but to be proven.

“[The findings] teach this factor of the field is intensely poorly explored in the intervening time, alternatively it does hold a range of attention-grabbing flora and fauna.”