When researchers were poking around in part of the Galápagos marine reserve that hadn’t been explored before, they found something both surprising and encouraging: a deep-sea coral reef that is thriving. Why is that so surprising? Well, because coral reefs around the world are currently in dire straits.
As sea temperatures rise and the ocean acidifies, reefs are suffering. Bleaching events around the world are ticking up, and if a reef bleaches too many years in a row, that reef dies. And when a reef dies, it takes an entire ecosystem down with it. But the newly-discovered reef, sitting nearly 2,000 feet deep, is full of creatures.
“They are pristine and teeming with life,” said Dr Michelle Taylor, a marine biologist and co-leader of the expedition, called the Galapagos Deep. “Pink octopus, batfish, squat lobsters and an array of deep-sea fish, sharks, and rays.”
Using a submersible that’s capable of diving a little over 20,000 feet, scientists went on an exploratory mission to the summit of a seamount in the middle of the Galápagos marine reserve archipelago. The find is encouraging because it means that protected areas like marine reserves are actually somewhat protected.
“This is encouraging news,” said José Antonio Dávalos, the environment minister for Ecuador, which owns the Galápagos. “It reaffirms our determination to establish new marine protected areas [MPAs] in Ecuador and to continue promoting the creation of a regional marine protected area in the eastern tropical Pacific.”
Before this new reef was discovered, it was believed that Wellington Reef in the northern part of the Galápagos archipelago was one of the few remaining reefs that survived a particularly destructive El Niño event that occurred in 1982.
