Deep Ocean Corals


Transcript

RESEARCHERS:

So Hawai’i is interesting, because it is the most remote island chain in the world, it has a somewhat low diversity of corals.

These are also the deepest images ever captured inside the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument and so this is both an exciting and historic moment here.

Wow, look at that current. Oh, sheez.

These corals position themselves with the current and feed on small particles that are in the water column.

These boulders out here are premium habitat for a coral.

Growth is not very fast, roughly about two centimeters a year.

These are enormous colonies right here, these are bigger than adult people, so some of these are over two meters in height.

This is the first time the Okeanos Explorer is going to collect a biological specimen.

This family of black corals is very elongate polyps.

That bamboo coral is like nothing that has been imaged before from this region.

Certainly never seen this either way, if they’re tentacles or mesenterial filament, I’ve never seen anything like this on a corallium.

This genus has not yet been published, and it’s in the process of being named and described.

This is all new, unexplored terrain.

And it’s surprising us, because it was not the community that we expected by any means.

That’s the thing about exploration and when you’re going to places that nobody’s ever been, is you get surprised.