WEBVTT 00:00:06.392 --> 00:00:12.220 I'm Charles Messing, I'm a professor at Nova Southeastern University in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. 00:00:13.214 --> 00:00:20.090 I'm an invertebrate zoologist. I specialize in particular in a group of animals called the crinoids, the sea lilies and feather stars. 00:00:21.786 --> 00:00:24.390 But I also work on deep-sea coral habitats. 00:00:27.646 --> 00:00:32.580 Right now, I'm aboard NOAA's Okeanos Explorer, in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico. 00:00:33.558 --> 00:00:37.210 The goals for this expedition could make a list as long as your arm. 00:00:38.178 --> 00:00:41.960 First of all, we're exploring. We're going to places that nobody has been to before, 00:00:42.160 --> 00:00:44.320 to see things no one has seen before. 00:00:44.520 --> 00:00:52.880 But we're looking particularly for vulnerable marine habitats, deep-sea coral and sponge habitats, chemosynthetic communities. 00:00:53.531 --> 00:00:58.370 We're also investigating the organisms that live in the midwaters and the geology of the seafloor 00:00:58.570 --> 00:01:03.710 and we're exploring our nation's maritime heritage. We're going to be looking for some shipwrecks. 00:01:06.971 --> 00:01:09.710 So one of our mission goals is to look for deep-sea corals. 00:01:10.343 --> 00:01:14.990 And when we talk about deep-sea corals, of course, we're talking about the corals that live in the deep ocean. 00:01:15.807 --> 00:01:20.250 When you think about corals, you usually think about shallow coral reefs and that they need sunlight. 00:01:20.450 --> 00:01:24.860 And of course, the deep-sea corals live in an area where there is no sunlight. 00:01:25.060 --> 00:01:30.130 So they don't have, for example, the symbiotic algae that allows shallow-water corals to grow. 00:01:32.502 --> 00:01:37.190 Here in the Gulf of Mexico, there's a wide variety of deep-sea corals, and we know this because 00:01:37.390 --> 00:01:40.070 the previous expeditions have found them. 00:01:40.270 --> 00:01:45.190 They've found bamboo corals and stony corals and soft corals and so on in the deep sea. 00:01:46.066 --> 00:01:49.990 On this expedition, we found some of the same things that people have found before, 00:01:50.190 --> 00:01:53.990 but we're finding them in places where they've never been seen before. 00:01:54.190 --> 00:01:59.270 And we've also found a couple of things that are probably new species of corals. 00:02:00.529 --> 00:02:03.450 This is the beauty of exploration, you never know what you're going to see, 00:02:03.650 --> 00:02:14.230 and here we've luckily ended up in an incredible area, on an incredible wall of just a huge diversity of suspension feeders -- 00:02:14.430 --> 00:02:17.670 corals, sponges, corals and their commensals. 00:02:20.619 --> 00:02:24.880 So it looks like, coming in to view, we've got a couple more of these very large coral colonies. 00:02:25.512 --> 00:02:26.460 Oh yes, look at that. 00:02:32.351 --> 00:02:39.720 Now, we have great video. I mean, it's amazing the detail that they can zoom in and we can see on our monitors, 00:02:39.920 --> 00:02:47.100 but in the final analysis, in many cases, we have to have the specimen to look at the microscopic anatomy, 00:02:47.300 --> 00:02:50.800 to see structures we can't see in the video. 00:02:51.457 --> 00:02:55.900 And of course we need to take tissue samples to analyze the DNA of these organisms. 00:02:56.717 --> 00:03:03.940 So the other day we came across this coral, and our scientists ashore had the idea that maybe this was new. 00:03:04.140 --> 00:03:07.560 They hadn't seen it before. So this was one of the ones that we really wanted to collect. 00:03:08.288 --> 00:03:09.330 And we were successful. 00:03:13.304 --> 00:03:19.000 Deep-sea corals are extremely important because they are architects of complex habitats. 00:03:19.200 --> 00:03:25.420 They build three-dimensional frameworks that can be taken advantage of by other organisms, 00:03:25.620 --> 00:03:32.810 from fish and crustaceans, including commercial species, worms, microscopic organisms, sponges, mollusks -- 00:03:33.010 --> 00:03:40.720 you name it, all of these organisms can find homes, shelter, food, etc., in these deep-sea coral habitats. 00:03:41.896 --> 00:03:48.070 Deep-sea corals are really important for a number of reasons, one of which we're seeing here, 00:03:48.270 --> 00:03:55.360 in that they provide this complex, three-dimensional habitat which is used by lots of other invertebrates. 00:03:55.560 --> 00:04:00.090 So a lot of animals use these corals as a form of substrate to attach to and 00:04:00.290 --> 00:04:06.830 also a form of shelter to shelter within so that they can escape predators that may be passing by. 00:04:08.982 --> 00:04:13.690 So it's really important that we explore for these deep-sea habitats, like these coral communities, 00:04:13.890 --> 00:04:20.430 because NOAA and other agencies are tasked with managing the marine resources of the Gulf of Mexico, 00:04:20.630 --> 00:04:23.170 and they can't manage what they don't know. 00:04:23.370 --> 00:04:30.250 So we're exploring as much as we can to contribute to the knowledge of the deep-sea resources of the Gulf of Mexico.