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The largest aggregation of fishes ever recorded in the abyssal deep-sea was discovered by a team of oceanographers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the National Oceanography Centre (NOC). The findings were published in Deep-Sea Research.
“Our observations truly surprised us,” said Astrid Leitner, lead author on the study, who conducted this work as a graduate researcher in UH Mānoa’s School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST). “We had never seen reports of such high numbers of fishes in the sparsely-populated, food-limited deep-sea.” |
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Seamounts effect on deep-sea biology
The researchers, including Leitner, Jennifer Durden from NOC and UH Mānoa professors Jeffrey Drazen and Craig Smith, made the observation on an expedition to the Clarion Clipperton Zone (CCZ). The CCZ is a large region stretching nearly from Hawaiʻi to Mexico, which is being explored for deep-sea mining of nodules containing metals such as copper, cobalt, zinc and manganese. |
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