WEBVTT 00:00:09.436 --> 00:00:14.850 Given the proximity of so many millions of people that live along the southeast coast, 00:00:14.910 --> 00:00:20.676 it seems that, of course this area would be very well known, and we would know exactly where everything is. 00:00:20.736 --> 00:00:22.609 And that's so not true. 00:00:30.322 --> 00:00:35.025 Every dive that we've done has been in places where people have not been beforeĀ  00:00:35.085 --> 00:00:40.765 and so all of this information is really important to managing our deep-sea resources. 00:00:41.794 --> 00:00:49.687 This large area was deemed a coral Habitat Area of Particular Concern by the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council in 2010. 00:00:57.421 --> 00:01:01.523 Yes! That's Lophelia. Great. That's quite impressive. 00:01:03.287 --> 00:01:06.072 It's a field of dreams for someone who is looking for Lophelia. 00:01:09.231 --> 00:01:11.867 Deep-sea corals and sponges settle on hard substrateĀ  00:01:12.352 --> 00:01:20.089 and they benefit from strong currents which bring lots of food through the water column to these suspension feeders. 00:01:25.315 --> 00:01:29.947 We will be very curious to see what it is that is making these mounds, 00:01:30.007 --> 00:01:35.487 whether it is biogenic, made by corals, or whether there are some rock formations down there. 00:01:38.799 --> 00:01:46.149 Each one of these dives allows us to learn more about each species and how all of these environmental parameters effect it. 00:01:49.847 --> 00:01:55.946 We use information on currents, we use whatever information we can about the substrate type, 00:01:56.006 --> 00:02:01.329 whether it's soft or hard, and we also look at things like vertical relief. 00:02:02.296 --> 00:02:10.568 And these things are important to us because we know that they're conducive to the development of deep-sea corals and sponge communities. 00:02:19.856 --> 00:02:25.320 Diving to these depths is equivalent to trying to fly into outer space. It's just inner space. 00:02:26.328 --> 00:02:35.336 Maximizing the time and effort we have on the seafloor is critical to ensuring that the scientific data that we produce is resuableĀ  00:02:35.396 --> 00:02:46.293 and Okeanos Explorer and the partners at GFOE are of course providing us with extraordinary data that we wouldn't have otherwise. 00:02:51.019 --> 00:02:53.658 That is a beautiful specimen, isn't it? 00:02:56.360 --> 00:03:02.027 The nice thing about these dives is that every one is a test of existing models. 00:03:02.087 --> 00:03:11.246 So we do need more dives to test them, but we continually improve the predictive of how the models with more exploration. 00:03:24.186 --> 00:03:31.084 By partnering, everybody gets better, even more accurate information more quickly than any one agency could do independently. 00:03:31.929 --> 00:03:38.808 So that's been a big success of all of these programs is the partnering to make this kind of research happen. 00:03:50.667 --> 00:03:56.914 Our management is only as good as the information we have from expeditions like this one. 00:04:01.190 --> 00:04:07.157 As humans, we will need resources from the deep sea more and more as time goes on, 00:04:07.217 --> 00:04:12.880 yet we can extract them and use them in a sensible way if we just know where things are.