Bob-tail squid (which actually aren’t squid) were seen on several occasions, winning
the cutest critter award. Although we’d hoped to find a WWII shipwreck, the cliff of
rock slabs was a wonderful sight, with dense, diverse populations of fish, crabs, and
sponges. (Depth: 350 meters, 50 miles east of Cape Lookout, N.C.)
Diverse deep coral and sponge communities were found in many areas with rocky
scarps. (Depth: 1,700 meters, 190 miles southeast of Charleston.)
The biota were so varied, we were all awed. Any substrate
that was relatively hard had diverse clusters of fauna. Rocky
outcrops were often terraced and stair-step like with vertical
walls onto which huge deep corals, sponges, and seastars clung.
Even the mudflats had many species of echinoderms, crabs,
and fish—different at each locale. The four coral mounds we
visited were among hundreds that occur along the Florida–
Georgia margin at depths of 600 to 900 meters. They are steep
piles of dead coral skeleton constructed over hundreds of
thousands of years and are topped with living deep-sea coral
and sponge communities that continue to utilize the skeletal
substrate and build upward within the Gulf Stream’s food-rich
current. The submarine canyons off the North Carolina coast
had numerous areas where methane gasses have or are gently
SUMMER/FALL 2018 • VOLUME 40
Cruise track for EX1806, from Charleston,
S.C. to Norfolk, Va., including 17 dive
sites. Note how poorly mapped most
of the Blake Plateau is.
seeping from the seafloor. We hoped that a mysterious feature
identified on our multibeam sonar maps was a World War II
shipwreck, but instead it turned out to be a densely populated,
diverse benthic habitat on a steep scarp of rock slabs.
We have so much to explore and so much to understand
about our own deep-sea backyard. Not only does this
region hold untold secrets to the Atlantic’s geologic history,
Gulf Stream fluctuations, and climate variations, it is part
of Earth’s interconnected final frontier—the deep sea. We
must understand this frontier to conserve its habitats while
carefully managing its wealth of potential resources.
Visit oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/explorations/
ex1806/welcome.html to learn about the expedition, and
view wonderfully produced highlight videos and images. NK
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