Life beneath the water’s surface continues to amaze. Crazy, breathtaking creatures like those in these photos reside in the deep, unknown ocean. The red, spherical fish (Chaunacops), pictured in the top photo, was spotted at a depth of 1,389 meters by an underwater robot called SuBastian, which can descend as deep as 4,500 meters. Most marine animals cannot perceive the red color on the image themselves. They only see the colors that reach these depths: blue and green. Only some predatory fish can see the red color, which is how they find their prey.
No less than 71 percent of our earth is covered with water. And yet we know little about it: only a quarter of underwater life has been mapped. A international team of the American Schmidt Ocean Institute contributed an important piece of the puzzle at the beginning of this year. The researchers went on an expedition off the coast of Chile for a month. Their focus was on the Salas y Gómez and Nazca undersea mountain ranges, which stretch over 2,900 square kilometers between Chile and Easter Island.
Unknown biodiversity
Like the fish, the bottom four photos were taken by SuBastian during that expedition. The robot photographed the orange spiral coral, red stubby lobster and whitish sponges at a depth of about 1,400 meters, while the pink sea urchins (Oblong dermenchinus) were at a depth of 516 meters.
The seamounts, formed by volcanic activity, lie in waters of the Humboldt Current. This is a cold, nutrient-rich ocean current from Antarctica, which creates a unique ecosystem with a rich, virtually unknown biodiversity.
During the expedition, the team discovered an estimated 100 new marine species, such as deep-sea corals, glass sponges, sea urchins and stocky lobsters.
Although expeditions to remote places like this often lead to new discoveries, the number of species also surprised the researchers themselves. “It was overwhelming. A gift that encourages us to further unravel the mystery of the ocean,” says one of the researchers enthusiastically in a video.