The bottom of the ocean is a very, very dark place – although it’s possible for very slight sunlight to reach 1,000 metres deep under ideal conditions, that is rare, and from around 200 metres (or 656 feet) down, there is usually no light. Before the age of deep-sea exploration, human scientists believed there could be no life at all in deep sea beds in the absence of energy from the sun. But life, as we now know, always seems to find a way, even in the harshest of environments.
Recently, a team of six women marine biologists made waves with an October 2017 paper on deep-sea methane vents or cold seeps, and the amazing life they sustain some 4,000 feet under the sea. One of them was Dr. Judith Gobin, a Senior Lecturer in Marine Biology at The UWI Department of Life Sciences in St. Augustine, Trinidad. Dr. Gobin is a major contributor to the knowledge of marine biodiversity in T&T seas due to her life’s work studying the animals that live in the coastal seabed’s soft sediments and rocky areas.
Scientists sailing aboard the Exploration Vessel Nautilus have found 83 deep-sea species, including a purple octopus, living almost a mile deep in sites off Trinidad’s east coast in the El Pilar area, a place earmarked for oil and gas exploration. This new species of Graneledone octopus (above) was spotted off Trinidad’s east coast during a 2014 Nautilus trip to El Pilar. Photo: Ocean Exploration Trust.
Dr. Gobin sat down with Shereen Ali to share the story of the find, and her own fascinating journey of discovery of life in the sea. (Click here for article)
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