Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather than on taxonomy.
In marine geology, a guyot, also known as a tablemount, is an isolated underwater volcanic mountain (seamount) with a flat top more than 200 m (660 ft) below the surface of the sea. The diameters of these flat summits can exceed 10 km (6.2 mi). Guyots are most commonly found in the Pacific Ocean, but they have been identified in all the oceans except the Arctic Ocean.
A seamount is a large geologic landform that rises from the ocean floor but that does not reach to the water's surface, and thus is not an island, islet or cliff-rock. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to 1,000–4,000 m (3,300–13,100 ft) in height. They are defined by oceanographers as independent features that rise to at least 1,000 m (3,281 ft) above the seafloor, characteristically of conical form. The peaks are often found hundreds to thousands of meters below the surface, and are therefore considered to be within the deep sea. During their evolution over geologic time, the largest seamounts may reach the sea surface where wave action erodes the summit to form a flat surface. After they have subsided and sunk below the sea surface such flat-top seamounts are called "guyots" or "tablemounts".
Bottom trawling is trawling along the seafloor. It is also referred to as "dragging". The scientific community divides bottom trawling into benthic trawling and demersal trawling. Benthic trawling is towing a net at the very bottom of the ocean and demersal trawling is towing a net just above the benthic zone. Bottom trawling can be contrasted with midwater trawling, where a net is towed higher in the water column. Midwater trawling catches pelagic fish such as anchovies, and mackerel, whereas bottom trawling targets both bottom-living fish (groundfish) and semi-pelagic species such as cod, squid, shrimp, and rockfish.
Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary is a marine sanctuary located off the coast of California. It protects an area of 1,286 sq mi (3,331 km2) of marine wildlife. The administrative center of the sanctuary is on an offshore granite outcrop 4.5 sq mi (12 km2) by 9.5 sq mi (25 km2), located on the continental shelf off of California. The outcrop is, at its closest, 6 mi (10 km) from the sanctuary itself.
Demersal fish, also known as groundfish, live and feed on or near the bottom of seas or lakes. They occupy the sea floors and lake beds, which usually consist of mud, sand, gravel or rocks. In coastal waters they are found on or near the continental shelf, and in deep waters they are found on or near the continental slope or along the continental rise. They are not generally found in the deepest waters, such as abyssal depths or on the abyssal plain, but they can be found around seamounts and islands. The word demersal comes from the Latin demergere, which means to sink.
The New England Seamounts is a chain of over twenty underwater extinct volcanic mountains known as seamounts. This chain is located off the coast of Massachusetts in the Atlantic Ocean and extends over 1,000 km from the edge of Georges Bank. Many of the peaks of these mountains rise over 4,000 m from the seabed. The New England Seamounts chain is the longest such chain in the North Atlantic and is home to a diverse range of deep sea fauna. Scientists have visited the chain on various occasions to survey the geologic makeup and biota of the region. The chain is part of the Great Meteor hotspot track and was formed by the movement of the North American Plate over the New England hotspot. The oldest volcanoes that were formed by the same hotspot are northwest of Hudson Bay, Canada. Part of the seamount chain is protected by Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument.
The Bear Seamount is a guyot or flat-topped underwater volcano in the Atlantic Ocean. It is the oldest of the New England Seamounts, which was active more than 100 million years ago. It was formed when the North American Plate moved over the New England hotspot. It is located inside the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument, which was proclaimed by President of the United States Barack Obama to protect the seamount's biodiversity.
Cobb Seamount is a seamount and guyot located 500 km (310 mi) west of Grays Harbor, Washington, United States. Cobb Seamount is one of the seamounts in the Cobb–Eickelberg Seamount chain, a chain of underwater volcanoes created by the Cobb hotspot that terminates near the coast of Alaska. It lies just west of the Cascadia subduction zone, and was discovered in August 1950 by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service fisheries research vessel R/V John N. Cobb. By 1967, over 927 km (576 mi) of soundings and dozens of samples from the seamount had been collected.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and introduction to Oceanography.
The habitat of deep-water corals, also known as cold-water corals, extends to deeper, darker parts of the oceans than tropical corals, ranging from near the surface to the abyss, beyond 2,000 metres (6,600 ft) where water temperatures may be as cold as 4 °C (39 °F). Deep-water corals belong to the Phylum Cnidaria and are most often stony corals, but also include black and horny corals and soft corals including the Gorgonians. Like tropical corals, they provide habitat to other species, but deep-water corals do not require zooxanthellae to survive.
The Fogo Seamounts, also called the Fogo Seamount Chain, are a group of undersea mountains southeast of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland in the North Atlantic Ocean. This seamount chain, lying approximately 500 km (310 mi) offshore from the island of Newfoundland, consists of several submarine volcanoes that have been extinct for millions of years. They are one of the few seamount chains located in Canadian waters off the coast of Atlantic Canada.
As with other countries, the 200 nautical miles (370 km) exclusive economic zone (EEZ) off the coast of the United States gives its fishing industry special fishing rights. It covers 11.4 million square kilometres, which is the second largest zone in the world, exceeding the land area of the United States.
Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Man's Impact On European Seas (HERMIONE) is an international multidisciplinary project, started in April 2009, that studies deep-sea ecosystems. HERMIONE scientists study the distribution of hotspot ecosystems, how they function and how they interconnect, partially in the context of how these ecosystems are being affected by climate change and impacted by humans through overfishing, resource extraction, seabed installations and pollution. Major aims of the project are to understand how humans are affecting the deep-sea environment and to provide policy makers with accurate scientific information, enabling effective management strategies to protect deep sea ecosystems. The HERMIONE project is funded by the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme, and is the successor to the HERMES project, which concluded in March 2009.
The Phoenix Islands Protected Area (PIPA) is located in the Republic of Kiribati, an ocean nation in the central Pacific approximately midway between Australia and Hawaii. PIPA constitutes 11.34% of Kiribati's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and with a size of 408,250 km2 (157,630 sq mi) it is one of the largest marine protected areas (MPA), and one of the largest protected areas of any type on Earth. The PIPA was also designated as the world’s largest and deepest UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2010. The PIPA conserves one of the world's largest intact oceanic coral archipelago ecosystems, includes 14 known underwater seamounts and other deep-sea habitats. The area contains approximately 800 known species of fauna, including about 200 coral species, 500 fish species, 18 marine mammals and 44 bird species. In total it is equivalent to the size of the state of California in the US, though the total land area is only 25 km2 (9.7 sq mi). To the north of the PIPA is the U.S. administered Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument that is currently the world’s largest designated MPA.
The Graveyard Seamounts, officially known as the Graveyard Knolls, are a series of 28 small seamounts and edifices located on the Chatham Rise, east of New Zealand. They cover about 140 km2 (54 sq mi) and stand out from the surrounding oceanic plateau that measures several hundred kilometers. They are named after various morose figures following the naming of the largest of the knolls as "the Graveyard" as it was a graveyard of fishing gear that became stuck on it. The most prominent among the group of knolls are Ghoul, Diabolical, Voodoo, Scroll, Hartless, Pyre, Gothic, Zombie, Mummy, Headstone, Morgue and Graveyard.
Sedlo Seamount is an isolated seamount and underwater volcano located in the Northeast Atlantic, 180 mi (290 km) northeast of Graciosa Island. It has an elongate structure, roughly 75 by 30 km. The summit is flat with three peaks. Sedlo Seamount sits on the ocean floor 3,000 m (9,843 ft) deep, and rises to within 660 m (2,165 ft) of the surface. Sedlo seamount has a tablemount structure, indicating that the peak of the seamount had once been above the water, but has since been ground down by persistent erosion to its current height. The seamount stands within the Exclusive Economic Zone of the Azores.
Placopecten magellanicus, previously listed as Pecten tenuicostatus and as Pecten grandis and once referred to as the "giant scallop", common names Atlantic deep-sea scallop, deep sea scallop, North Atlantic sea scallop, American sea scallop, Atlantic sea scallop, or sea scallop, is a commercially important pectinid bivalve mollusk native to the northwest Atlantic Ocean.
The Condor seamount is a submarine mountain located at 17 km west-southwest of Faial Island in the Azores, about 1800 m high, 39 km long and 23 km wide, stretching from the 185 m depth up to 2003 m. It is an elongated shaped volcano, oriented East-West, with the top relatively flat with smooth sedimentary flanks. Most seamounts lie in deep sea and/or open ocean, and thus are inaccessible and difficult to study. The Condor bank, constitutes an interesting case study due to its accessibility, located close to Faial island, and for that reason is also known by “Condor-Terra”.
Vema Seamount is a seamount in the South Atlantic Ocean. Discovered in 1959 by a ship with the same name, it lies 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) from Tristan da Cunha and 1,000 kilometres (620 mi) northwest of Cape Town. The seamount has a flat top at a mean depth of 73 metres which was eroded into the seamount at a time when sea levels were lower; the shallowest point lies at 26 metres depth. The seamount was formed between 15-11 million years ago, possibly by a hotspot.
