My name is Daniel Wagner and I'm an Expedition Coordinator with NOAA's Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
We are on the Deep Connections 2019 expedition exploring Atlantic canyons and seamounts off the United States and Canada.
The coast off New England and Nova Scotia is home to an intricate network of canyons
as well as several seamounts.
Now these two habitats in particular are known as hotspots of biodiversity.
They are some of the most productive and most biodiverse habitats in the deep sea.
yet only a very few of these have been explored.
The three Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) that we'll be exploring on this expedition include
The Gully Marine Protected Area
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument
and The Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-sea Coral Protection Area
The Gully Marine Protected Area was established in 2004 to protect a very special place
that's located about 125 miles off Nova Scotia.
The Gully Marine Protected Area provides refuge to a wide diversity of unique species and habitats
including fifteen species of whales and dolphins.
But on the seafloor we also have a wide diversity of animals
One of the main features within The Gully MPA is The Gully Canyon
A submarine canyon that is the largest on the Western North Atlantic
In this expedition, we were able to explore the Eastern flank of the canyon
Which had never been explored
And made some really remarkable discoveries
So we found a wide array of corals and sponges
In very dense aggregations, which were quite remarkable, on the wall of the Eastern flank of the canyon
These bamboo coral forests are amazing! We've never seen them this dense in The Gully or really anywhere else.
Now we've got this extensive area with it, it's really quite stunning.
The Northeast Canyons and Seamounts Marine National Monument was established in 2016
to protect approximately 4,913 square miles.
And the Monument is composed of two units: the Canyons Unit and the Seamounts Unit.
Within the Canyons Unit of this Monument we have
three of the largest canyons off the East coast of the United States.
Oceanographer Canyon is actually comparable in size to The Grand Canyon
The seamounts, likewise, are some really remarkable areas
not just biologically, but also geologically and geographically.
And what's really great about this features being part of this Marine National Monument
is they act as a living laboratory where scientists like ourselves can go out here
and see these places and explore these areas in order to learn more about how they're connected
and how they serve as refuse to commercially important species
or how they serve as habitat for a diverse array of organisms.
The Frank R. Lautenberg Deep-sea Coral Protection Area was established in 2016.
It protects areas that are about seventy to eighty miles off the coast of New York to Virginia.
And it extends from the shelf all the way to abyssal plains and we have a wide diversity of habitats.
This Deep-sea Coral Protection Area was specifically established to protect organisms that live on the seafloor.
Particularly, corals and sponges.
Marine Protected Areas are important for many reasons
By protecting these resources, they not just help protect its biodiversity for the planet
but many of these are also fishery management tools
They help to restock populations
they help what we call spillover effects
so they provide a place for nursery grounds and a place where important fish species can reproduce
and restock and replenish fished populations outside the Marine Protected Area boundaries
They're also really important as focal points for research
Once a Marine Protected Area is established it helps draw attention from the scientific community
to conduct additional research.
The deepest portions of many of these Marine Protected Areas haven't been explored
For the most part, we have never laid eyes on these deepest portions
And by taking the remotely operated vehicle down to these deeper depths
we're able to visually inspect the natural resources that are within them.
And this is really important to resources managers that mange the resources within them.
You can't manage what you don't understand and what you don't know.