Right now we are within the boundaries of the National Marine Sanctuary of American Samoa.
And they've granted us permissions to make observations and collect here.
There is a network of marine protected areas in American Samoa.
Together, they comprise an area of 13,580 miles of protected marine ecosystems.
This place where we are diving today, in Rose Atoll, is the southernmost territory of the United States.
As far as we know, this is the first time that this part of the atoll has ever been observed.
One of the main goals of this dive is to characterize deepwater coral communities that will help management of the Monument.
This dive offers an important comparison between deepwater and shallow water communities.
Look at the appendages in the center of the animal, they're moving quite a lot.
He's sticking the tentacles in those holes.
He's beautifully translucent.
Wow.
What a beautiful animal.
The front part of the pectoral fins, those fan-shaped fins on the side, have thickened rays
and this fish actually uses those to walk around on the bottom.
So those things you see under the fish, that are like little thin legs, are actually part of the fin.
They're really interesting fish with a lot of unusual morphological features.
Look at that close up. Oh!
Look at it!
So does it attract prey like this, Santiago?
Yeah. So the tentacles of this anemone have stinging cells, nematocysts,
that have microscopic harpoons that inject venom.
Wow. This is a big sponge.
This is really quite unusual. It's probably going to be a brand new species, quite frankly.
Many of the species that we see here, we can be pretty confident that they are likely to be new species.
And that's because this is an area of the world we know very, very little about.
All of the expeditions that are going to happen this year on the Okeanos Explorer
are part of a larger initiative, called CAPSTONE,
which is a multi-year campaign to collect deepwater baseline information
that we hope will support management decisions in marine protected areas in
United States territories as well as other territories in the western and central Pacific.
So what role does this area play in the bigger biogeographical puzzle of life at the seafloor.