You ready to go down? Pilot is ready to descend.
Today, we're going to be targeting approximately 1800
meters hoping for sponges and corals and all the interesting
organisms that associate with them.
I'm not sure that me personally in the Atlantic, I've ever seen
this much coral in one place. It's incredible.
The only way you can have all of this coral and all of the
sponges blanketing the seafloor is if there's all kinds of food
being produced above it in the water. The phytoplankton that
are using the sun's energy sink down here. These are the
beneficiaries of all that food sinking through the water
column. All these information being used to inform the
regional government of the Azores and the designation of
new marine protected areas. The aim of the regional government is
to protect 30% of the EEZ by twenty twenty-three. So all the
information is extremely valuable to inform those
decisions.