WEBVTT 00:00:13.505 --> 00:00:16.700 In shallow water,basically our apex predators that you might be familiar with 00:00:16.900 --> 00:00:21.970 are sharks or large fishes like jacks, groupers, snappers, things like that. 00:00:28.997 --> 00:00:32.930 In the deep sea, sharks are still sometimes the apex predators. 00:00:33.130 --> 00:00:36.950 More often than not, though, when you're talking about things that live in and around the bottom, 00:00:37.150 --> 00:00:40.560 you are also talking about invertebrate apex predators. 00:00:44.975 --> 00:00:49.780 There's really something pretty extraordinary about coral predation in the deep sea. 00:00:49.980 --> 00:00:57.250 Things we see eating coral polyps, like sea stars feeding on the same colony year after year. 00:00:59.890 --> 00:01:07.140 In addition, there are cephalopods, the octopuses and squids that feed on animals on the seafloor as well. 00:01:13.358 --> 00:01:19.760 Moderate to large fishes, they aren't as common, but fishes can be apex predators as well. 00:01:23.833 --> 00:01:30.250 Ultimately, if all the fish disappeared, marine environments everywhere, from coastal environments all the way to the deep sea, 00:01:30.450 --> 00:01:34.780 would become unbalanced and it could cause ecosystem collapse. 00:01:37.639 --> 00:01:44.300 We're in the very early stages of trying to understand the ecosystem dynamics of predation in the deep sea. 00:01:44.500 --> 00:01:49.760 Very little is known about how the food web actually fits together. 00:01:51.414 --> 00:01:54.400 We know way more about the shallow water environment in terms of 00:01:54.600 --> 00:01:59.670 trophic cascades and keystone species, for example, than we do in the deep sea. 00:01:59.870 --> 00:02:06.650 And so, by doing these observations, by recording behavior such as carnivory, 00:02:06.850 --> 00:02:13.700 we can start building up that understanding and putting those pieces together of these complex food webs. 00:02:19.817 --> 00:02:26.080 Something that we talk a lot about on this expedition is how incredibly long lived these species are. 00:02:28.785 --> 00:02:34.570 You know, very rarely have I gotten to get a glimpse of sharks in the deep sea, 00:02:36.538 --> 00:02:42.970 but large sharks can live for several hundred years, which is absolutely amazing to me. 00:02:47.351 --> 00:02:54.830 So, if one animal gets removed by bycatch or by hook and line or any of these extraction techniques, 00:02:55.030 --> 00:03:00.960 because they're extremely long lived, it takes a long time to replace that individual. 00:03:01.160 --> 00:03:08.460 And we're looking at multiple individuals over large scales. That could be an incredible impact on the ecosystem. 00:03:11.918 --> 00:03:16.110 Most of the areas we're looking at have been part of marine protected areas or marine reserves, 00:03:16.310 --> 00:03:22.720 and these are basically set aside from large amounts of anthropogenic impacts 00:03:22.920 --> 00:03:27.080 like direct fishing pressure and environmentally destructive practices. 00:03:28.667 --> 00:03:33.970 Inside of marine protected areas, hopefully it's a refuge, but these aren't islands unto themselves, 00:03:34.170 --> 00:03:40.750 they are just a piece of the larger ocean. So it's important to have large-scale population integrity. 00:03:44.782 --> 00:03:51.970 A lot of what we're trying to understand is what kind of habitats exist down there that might be able to support predators, 00:03:52.170 --> 00:04:00.660 and understanding the dynamics of populations and organism distribution in the deep sea 00:04:00.860 --> 00:04:05.650 is useful to park managers to try to understand what resources they have available, 00:04:05.850 --> 00:04:10.900 and determine where corals and sponges and large, deepwater fishes might occur. 00:04:11.100 --> 00:04:17.090 We're really trying to get a handle on identifying what is in these deep-sea environments, 00:04:17.290 --> 00:04:21.240 so that they can be conserved for future generations.