Biogeography of Deep-Water Chemosynthetic Ecosystems (ChEss)

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A global study of the biogeography of deep-water chemosynthetic ecosystems and the processes that drive them.

Paul Tyler
Chris German
Eva Ramirez Llodra
Maria Baker

Project Leaders:

Paul Tyler, Ph.D., National Oceanography Centre Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom

Chris German, Ph.D., Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, USA

Eva Ramirez Llodra, Ph.D., Institut de Ciències del Mar, Barcelona, Spain

Maria Baker, Ph.D., National Oceanography Centre Southampton, Southampton, United Kingdom


Visit the ChEss website.

 


 

National Oceanography Centre Southampton, UK
-- Eva Ramirez-Llodra, Paul A. Tylerand
Christopher R. German

Background
Directed from the National Oceanography Centre, Southampton (NOCS) in the UK, the Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC), in Barcelona, Spain, and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) in the US, ChEss is improving our knowledge of the biodiversity and biogeography of species from deep-water chemosynthetically-driven ecosystems at a global scale and increasing our understanding of the processes that shape these communities. In order to achieve such ambitious goals, scientists from around the globe have been brought together under the ChEss umbrella to coordinate their activities focusing on ChEss scientific objectives. ChEss is addressing the main questions of CoML on diversity, abundance and distribution of marine species, within the realm of deep-water reducing environments such as hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, whale falls, sunken wood and areas of low oxygen that intersect with continental margins and seamounts. It is crucial to combine results from research on all these systems in order to understand the phylogeographic relationships amongst all deep-water chemosynthetic ecosystems.

ChEss has three components:

(1) ChEssBase: Geo- and bio-referenced relational online database (available on the ChEss website and integrated with OBIS) for all species from deep water chemosynthetic ecosystems. The InterRidge Biological Database has been merged with ChEssBase. Progress is good and currently the database includes the majority of known species from hydrothermal vents, many from cold seeps and a few from whale falls - over 700 species in total. This work is on-going and periodic. It is shortly intended to also include sample information on the database - a useful tool for scientists and students to inform them of the whereabouts and availability of chemosynthetic biological samples held in major labs around the globe.

(2) Field Programmes: a long term phase of discovery and exploration is underway to locate new chemosynthetic sites at key locations as identified by the ChEss steering committee and after consultation with the wider community, in order to fill in the missing pieces of the biogeography puzzle. The selection of these key locations (shown below) was based on a number of specific scientific questions related to the distribution, isolation, evolution and dispersal of deep-water species from chemosynthetically-driven systems.

Figure. Key target areas for the ChEss field programme. Priority areas (pink and blue): Area A, Equatorial Atlantic Belt region - comprising cold seeps off Costa Rica and the Gulf of Mexico, the Cayman Trough spreading centre, the Barbados accretionary prism, the continental margin off north east Brazil including the Amazon outflow, the MAR north and south of the equatorial Fracture Zones and the West African continental margin; Area B, the SE Pacific region - comprising the East Chile Rise; the Peru-Chile trench; the OMZ region on the Chilean continental margin, and coincident whale migration and wood-fall areas; Area C, the New Zealand region - comprising hydrothermal vents (north of NZ extending toward the Lau Basin), cold seeps (immediately north and south of NZ), high concentrations of whale populations in Kaikoro Canyon and extensive sunken wood and fjords (west coast, South Island). Area D, Arctic and Antarctic regions where research projects are being developed within the International Polar Year Initiative. Other specific areas: (yellow): 1 - the ice-covered Gakkel Ridge, 2 - the (ultra)-slow ridges of the Norwegian-Greenland Sea, 3 - the northern MAR between the Iceland and Azores hot-spots; 4 - the Brazilian continental margin, 5 - the East Scotia Ridge and Bransfield Strait, 6 - the SW Indian Ridge, 7 - the Central Indian Ridge.

By the start of 2007, ChEss scientists had made new discoveries - the first Mid Atlantic Ridge vents south of the equator, new vents on the SW Indian Ridge, the hottest and deepest vent sites ever discovered, new cold seeps off NZ, and many new species in the predicted order of 1 new description every 2 weeks, one of which, the "yeti crab", Kiwa hirsuta, has had massive media attention.


Kiwa hirsuta. Image courtesy of Ifremer/A. Fifis

(3) Outreach and Education: Numerous activities have been launched and executed by ChEss to fulfill our goals for outreach and education. Multilingual educational webpages have been developed along with posters for schools to download. Various books and articles have been published and there are more and exciting projects in the pipeline. Direct contact with the public via exhibitions and public talks have also featured prominently throughout the lifetime of ChEss and will continue to do so. The initiatives and collaborations undertaken within the CoML-DESEO group since 2006 have created a great synergy amongst the CoML deep-sea projects in terms of O&E which are already providing the first results, such as the "Deeper than Light" book which is at its final production stages.

ChEss in 2010

By 2010 there will be more discoveries at key locations - for example, from the funded ChEsSo project exploring for vents and seeps in the Antarctic, and exciting new findings from the target sites on the Chile Margin. State-of-the-art technologies will have been developed, refined and tested, along with new sensors and analysis techniques. There will certainly be numerous legacies left by the ChEss programme. The international scientific community as represented on the ChEss SSC has formed strong bonds over the past years of the CoML and will undoubtedly continue on to the next decade and beyond. This is vital in the continuation of the global research agenda that has been set up to decipher the fundamental questions of ecological functioning within chemosynthetic ecosystems upon different scales. It is envisaged that ChEss SSC members will play key roles governing the future exploration and potential exploitation of these systems based upon sound scientific knowledge and owing to the strengthened collaborations made between scientists, industry and policy makers during the ChEss programme. ChEss researchers are also in collaboration with NASA to develop programmes for the search for life on planets or moons in outer space. Finally, one of the most important aspects for ChEss is to have significantly increased public awareness and interest about the biodiversity and functioning of the deep-sea.

Visit the multilingual scientific and educational Biogeography of Deep-Water Chemosynthetic Ecosystems web site