In the wake of the BP oil spill disaster - and under threat of global warming - Scentists have been scrambling to document various species and their habitats hundreds of kilometers below Australia's Great Barrier Reef .
The ambitious task ended up being a Eureka moment.
During the course of probes with sophisticated remote-controlled cameras, researchers stumbled on amazing underwater creatures - the likes of which have never been seen before - such as ancient sharks, giant oil fish, swarms of crustaceans, and primitive shell-dwelling squid species (Nautilus).
Special low-light sensitive cameras designed to explore the ocean floor at levels of 1400 metres, also uncovered pre-historic six-gilled sharks alongside a myriad of unidentified fish species.
"Some of the creatures that we've seen we were sort of expecting, some of them we weren't expecting, and some of them we haven't identified yet," a scholar at the University of Queensland noted in a recent press release.
"There was a shark that I really wasn't expecting, which was a false cat shark, which has a really odd dorsal fin."
Research teams found it necessary to facilitate unsusual tools on occasion to lure the creatures out since they normally go about their business out of reach of the sunlight.
Most in the field agree that the situation has become urgent due to the recent oil spills affecting the Great Barrier Reef, and the growing threat to its biodiversity by the warming and acidification of the world's oceans.
Consequently, there is a rush on to document the deep sea mysteries before they completely vanish.
Next stop?
The researchers are about to focus their attentions on the Gulf of Mexico and the devastating effects on the marine life there.
No comments:
Post a Comment