There are thousands of underwater volcanoes, and our lack of knowledge about them can lead to tragedy for us and the ecosystem in the ocean. Fortunately, there's now an easier way to detect them.
Thousands of Underwater Volcanoes Discovered
It is impossible to estimate how many underwater volcanoes or seamounts there are given that just 25% of the ocean bottom has been sonar scanned. But radar satellites that gauge ocean depth can potentially locate them by scanning for minute indications of seawater piling up on top of a submerged seamount being dragged by their gravity.
More than 24,000 were found using the procedure in a 2011 census. More than 19,000 additional ones have been added thanks to high-resolution radar data. Over 27,000 of them remain largely unexplored by sonar, Science reported.
According to David Sandwell, a marine geophysicist from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography who assisted in the project's direction, the discovery was "mind-boggling."
The new seamount catalog, published this month in Earth and Space Science, is a huge progress, according to Larry Mayer, the center's director for coastal and ocean mapping at the University of New Hampshire. The mountains are not only dangerous for navigation, but deep-sea miners are also interested in them because they contain rare-earth minerals.
Their distribution and size can provide information on magmatism and plate tectonics. For marine life, these oases are essential.
According to John Lowell, chief hydrographer at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which oversees the U.S. military's satellite mapping activities, they act as pot-stirrers by helping regulate the large-scale ocean flows that are responsible for sequestering enormous amounts of heat and carbon dioxide.
He added that we could be better prepared for climate change if we better understand how the sea floor is shaped.
What Are Seamounts?
According to IUCN, seamounts are underwater mountains of volcanic origin. They rise from the seafloor. They are considered a hotspot of marine biodiversity and home to many species.
However, they also face a number of threats, including sea bottom fishing and deep-sea mining.
Chains of seamounts frequently emerge when tectonic plates move over hot rock plumes that are immobile and rising from the mantle. According to Carmen Gaina, a geophysicist from the Queensland University of Technology, the catalog will yield immediate benefits for research into the interior of the Earth.
In the northeast Atlantic Ocean, it has already discovered new seamounts that may be used to monitor the development of the mantle plume that fuels Iceland's volcanoes. The survey also discovered seamounts close to an Indian Ocean ridge where new crust is formed as tectonic plates separate.
Gaina believes they point to unexpectedly high levels of volcanism in an area previously considered magma-starved.
For corals and other marine life, the steep slopes of seamounts resemble crowded, noisy skyscrapers, according to biologists. Amy Baco-Taylor, a deep-sea researcher at Florida State University, says they are oases for biodiversity and biomass. They serve as waypoints for whales.
Seamounts, however, are a topic of contention among scientists since they may harbor genetically separate species, similar to distant islands. They also wonder if seamounts act as platforms for life to hopscotch its way through the seas. According to Baco-Taylor, the new maps might support the latter theory by increasing the density of seamounts.
Studying seamounts is very important. According to Chris Yesson, a marine biologist at the Institute of Zoology of the Zoological Society of London, we can't safeguard things if we don't know they exist.
Yesson added that the maps would pay off practically because it would help them save time. He claimed that they once went to study a seamount in the Indian Ocean only to realize it was just a phantom and the pre-sonar depth records were not accurate.
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