Sentences with phrase «of deep reef»

Much of the deep reef is built by boulder, lettuce and large - cupped boulder coral and adorned by a variety of deepwater sea whips and rods.

On the GBR recent surveys have revealed up to 20,000 square kilometres of deep reef — equal in size to the combined area of all the shallow reefs,» Dr. Bridge says.

As part of the Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP), initiated by the Smithsonian Institution, a new goby fish species was discovered in the southern Caribbean.

Both corals and algae depend on sunlight to drive photosynthesis, and the study attributed the existence of many of the deep reef habitats to exceptionally clear water.

«On some of the deep reefs we surveyed, 100 percent of the fishes we recorded were endemic, meaning that they are all unique to the Hawaiian archipelago,» said Randall Kosaki Ph.D., NOAA's deputy superintendent of Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument and chief scientist of the expedition.

«The area of these deep reefs may in fact be quite large.

The economic and conservation value of deeper reefs renders them worthy of protection in their own right, and safeguarding these habitats will also extend ongoing efforts in shallow water to protect reef species across their entire depth range.»

At present very few of these deeper reef systems receive any form of protection around the world because reef management — where it exists — tends to focus on shallow reefs, the scientists say.

By using the manned submersible Curasub for exploration of the deep reefs around Curacao and documenting their discoveries in major scientific journals, marine biologists from all over the world have helped this Caribbean island in rapidly earning a reputation as a destination where exploring the twilight zone of the ocean is producing dynamic results.

This could be the moment to act to secure protection for Pulley Ridge, the extraordinary system of deep reefs 150 miles offshore from Sarasota.

Not exact matches

It is a desolate reef, but seldom a quiet one, for the wind - driven swells of the deep are constantly assaulting it, smashing its coral monuments and smothering it in white fury.

But while diving at several spots on the reef I have felt the current suddenly swing and run better than a knot in the opposite direction, so that, to avoid being carried off the deep side, I had to grab the base of a sea fan or the encrusted trunnion of an old cannon and hang on.

Set among deep blue waters with fringing coral reefs of turquoise and pastel green, the Mamanuca Islands and the islands of Nadi Bay offer tourists some of Fiji's most outstanding island beauty.

In her book Birthing From Within, nurse midwife and childbirth educator Pam England calls writing birth plans, «a ritual of modern pregnancy» that can act as, «a hidden reef on which your efforts toward deeper birth preparation may run aground.»

Using the Great Barrier Reef as their study case, they estimated the evolution of the region over the last 14,000 years and showed that (1) high sediment loads from catchments erosion prevented coral growth during the early phase of sea level rise and favoured deep offshore sediment deposition; (2) how the fine balance between climate, sea level, and margin physiography enabled coral reefs to thrive under limited shelf sedimentation rates at 6,000 years before present; and, (3) how over the last 3,000 years, the decrease of accommodation space led to the lateral extension of coral reefs consistent with available observational data.

Divers from the California Academy of Sciences decompress after visiting a deep reef near Easter Island.

Mooi explored the crystalline waters with a snorkel and flippers, while other members of the team dove to depths approaching 400 feet to explore the deep - water reefs further offshore.

Each programme covered a different type of ocean environment from the deep to coral reefs, so each interactive module broadly matched the subject.

The 35 authors of the United Nations Environmental Programme report — including the University's Professor Elaine Baker in the School of Geosciences — say as the world's surface reefs are being threatened, part of the ecosystem may survive in these barely known deeper environments, known as mesophotic coral ecosystems (MCEs).

One of the new fish species discovered in the Rariphotic, Haptoclinus dropi was named for the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project.

«Reef ecosystems just below the mesophotic are globally underexplored, and the conventional view based on the few studies that mention them was that mesophotic ecosystems transition directly into those of the deep sea,» Baldwin said.

«It's estimated that 95 percent of the livable space on our planet is in the ocean,» said Carole Baldwin, curator of fishes at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, lead author of the study and director of the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP).

Since 2011, when DROP began, more than 40 researchers, most from the National Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI), have intensively studied deep - reef fishes and invertebrates off Curaçao.

In Key Largo, aquanauts roam the reefs and a cadre of true believers design new outposts for life in the deep.

The initial motivation for studying deep - reef ecosystems was the declining health of shallow reefs.

To get a better estimate, the consortium of 17 researchers from Europe and Australia carefully drilled two holes, one 86 meters deep into the reef's inner shelf, the other 210 meters into a narrow reef skirting the margin of the outer shelf.

«Deep - sea coral reefs discovery in depths of the North - Pacific.»

A throng of reef - dwelling organisms live on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico's continental shelf some 200 kilometers offshore, from corals in the shallower regions to sponges, sea fans and other soft corals, and numerous fish species in the deep.

The deeper reefs in the Flower Garden Banks National Marine Sanctuary, 100 miles off the coast of Texas in the Gulf of Mexico, are also in the crosshairs.

A fleet of robotic submarines, based at the National Oceanography Centre (NOC), head - quartered in in Southampton, have been used to map vulnerable cold - water coral reefs in the deep ocean off southwest England.

Areas like the North Atlantic and South Pacific are particularly fertile habitats for deep - sea scleractinian reefs, but a combination of factors led scientists to believe that the accumulation of deep - sea coral colonies into healthy reefs was exceedingly unlikely in the deep waters of the North Pacific.

Deep cuts in emissions are necessary in order to save even a fraction of existing reefs, according to the team's results.

They include deep - sea limpets, reef - building corals, and coral predator crown - of - thorns starfish.

Researchers studied the Cayman reefs, which are 80 miles south of Cuba and surrounded by deep ocean water, in part because of their remoteness and negligible impact from a small nearby human population, Frazer said.

During a night dive in deep water off the northern Great Barrier Reef, zoologist Mark Norman of Museum Victoria in Melbourne and his colleagues had what they say is scientists» first - ever encounter with a live male blanket octopus.

The scientists said one - third of the Great Barrier Reef lies beyond the seaward edge of the shallower reefs, and the discovery of this prominent undersea landslide and its vast debris field in the deep Great Barrier Reef reveals a far more complex landscape than previously known.

Deep reefs, which extend from depths of 150 to more than 1,000 feet, are underexplored ecosystems worldwide.

Researchers are now able to study deep reefs in the southern Caribbean because of the availability of the Curasub submersible, a privately owned, manned submersible capable of descending to 1,000 feet.

Meanwhile, in a separate project, Smithsonian scientists were using a manned submersible to explore the deep - reef fish species off of Curacao in the southern Caribbean.

«We discover a new species of sea bass on Curacao deep reefs that just happens to be the missing adult stage of a larval fish from Florida, which we only knew existed because it was included as «decoration» in a scientific publication.

The work off Curacao resulting in the discovery of L. olneyi is part of the Smithsonian's Deep Reef Observation Project.

«These extensive algae meadows represent a major component of the deep - reef communities, and play a fundamentally important role in the overall ecology.»

Studying how biodiversity evolved on deeper, mesophotic reefs can help scientists interpret the origins of their economically important shallow - reef counterparts.

«With coral reefs facing a myriad of threats,» said Kimberly Puglise, an oceanographer with NOAA's National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, «the finding of extensive reefs off Maui provides managers with a unique opportunity to ensure that future activities in the region, such as cable laying, dredging dump sites, and deep sewer outfalls, do not irreparably damage these reefs.»

«Comparative analysis reveals use patterns of deeper Caribbean coral reefs by shark species: Group spawning may drive predator habitat use for lemon sharks, may inform fisheries management.»

The research team collected sediments from four deep reef environments between 30 - 50 meters south of St. Thomas, U.S.Virgin Islands, and from two shallower water reef sites.

The primary objective of the study was to characterize deep coral reef habitat, known as «mesophotic coral ecosystems» or the coral - reef «Twilight Zone.»

A team of sixteen researchers has completed a comprehensive investigation of deep coral - reef environments, known as mesophotic coral ecosystems, throughout the Hawaiian Archipelago.

«These findings opens the door for studying the geologic history of how these deep reefs evolved and responded to past environmental change,» said James Klaus, UM associate professor of geology and coauthor of the study.

Though the study included only a small number of sharks monitored over varying lengths of time, the findings may suggest that fish prey location may influence movements of their shark predators, and that group spawning events may shape ecosystem dynamics in deeper coral reefs.