Publications

Effective management of marine resources requires an understanding of the spatial distribution of biologically important communities. The north-western Gulf of Mexico contains diverse marine ecosystems at a large range of depths and geographic settings. To better understand the distribution of these marine habitats across large geographic areas under consideration for marine sanctuary status, presence-only predictive modelling was used.

In 2016, a Draft Environmental Impact Statement proposed the expansion of the current Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary boundaries to incorporate an additional 15 reefs and banks, including Elvers Bank. Antipatharians (black corals) were collected within the proposed expansion sites and analysed using morphological and molecular methods. A new species, Distichopathes hickersonae, collected at 172 m depth on Elvers Bank, is described within the family Aphanipathidae.

Species distribution modeling provides a cost-effective means of identifying potential deep-sea coral and sponge habitat over large areas to inform these management decisions and data collection. Here we describe good practices for deep-sea coral and sponge species distribution modeling, especially in the context of data collection and management applications. 

Massive, long-lived deep-sea red tree corals (Primnoa pacifica) are abundant on the outer continental shelf and upper slope of the Northeast Pacific, providing habitat for fish and invertebrates. Yet, their large size and arborescent morphology makes them susceptible to disturbance from fishing activities. A better understanding of their growth patterns will facilitate in-situ estimates of population age structure and biomass. Here, we evaluated relationships between ages, growth rates, gross morphological characteristics, and banding patterns in 11 colonies collected from depths of ~141–335 m off the Alaskan coast.

This study implemented a newly designed, autonomous, noninvasive plankton pump sampler that collected large mesozooplankton within 1 m of the seafloor. It was successfully deployed in the western Gulf of Alaska between the Shumagin Islands (~158°W) and Samalga Pass (−170°W), and collected in situ zooplankton from diverse benthic communities (coral, sponge and bare substrates) at depths in excess of 100 m.

Over a century of study in American Samoa has built a foundation of coral reef ecology within the region. However, this work has been restricted to shallow coral reefs (SCRs; <30 m) until recently, where a few studies have started describing American Samoa’s mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs). MCEs are defined as coral reef communities with zooxanthellate corals and associated biotic assemblages between 30 and 150 m depth. Mapping efforts within the territory have documented habitat characteristics for SCRs, as well as MCEs. We estimate that American Samoa has 451.5 km² of marine habitat between the shoreline and 150 m depth.

Over a 3-year period, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) organized and implemented a Pacific-wide field campaign entitled CAPSTONE: Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean NEeds. Under the auspices of CAPSTONE, NOAA mapped 597,230 km² of the Pacific seafloor (with ∼61% of mapped area located within US waters), including 323 seamounts, conducted 187 ROV dives totaling 891.5 h of ROV benthic imaging time, and documented >347,000 individual organisms. This comprehensive effort yielded dramatic insight into differences in biodiversity across depths, regions, and features, at multiple taxonomic scales.

Here, we present (1) the first observation of an extensive exposure of an undeformed Cretaceous seamount currently being subducted at the Mariana Trench inner slope;(2) vertical deformation of the forearc region related to subduction of Pacific Plate seamounts and thickened crust; (3) recovered Ocean Drilling Program and International Ocean Discovery Program cores of serpentinite mudflows that confirm exhumation of various Pacific Plate lithologies, including subducted reef limestone; (4) petrologic, geochemical and paleontological data from the cores that show that Pacific Plate seamount exhumation covers greater spatial and temporal extents; (5) the inference that microbial communities associated with serpentinite mud volcanism may also be exhumed from the subducted plate seafloor and/or seamounts; and (6) the implications for effects of these processes with regard to evolution of life.

A review of taxonomic and ecological studies for shallow and mesophotic antipatharians is presented for four regionally based case studies, three in the tropics (1) Central Indo-Pacific, plus adjacent sections of the Western Indo-Pacific, (2) Eastern Indo-Pacific (primarily Hawaiʻi), and (3) the Caribbean Sea) and one at temperate latitudes in the Mediterranean Sea and adjacent sections of the Northeast Atlantic. 

This full-day session of the ASLO 2019 Aquatic Sciences Meeting served as a forum to highlight recent advances in the understanding of deep-sea ecosystems in the western North Atlantic region encompassed by the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico (GoM), and U.S. Southeast Atlantic.