Featured Image Credit: © 2015 California Academy of Sciences
By: Sarah Sharkey
Sea creatures from the watery deep are hardtop identify and study. The sheer depth of deep ocean habitat has made it difficult for scientists to explore. In fact, we have only explored 1% of the world’s oceans.
The sometimes strange looking creatures have remained a mystery to the public for the most part. It is difficult to get excited about something that you cannot see. A recent advancement might change that though. A new portable device will allow researchers to transport a deep-sea animal from their mesophotic zone habitat to the surface. That is a huge deal! If you transported one of these animals without a device that keeps the pressure inside stable, then the animal would explode from the inside as they depressurized on their way to the surface.
The effort to help the public see what it is happening on the sea floor is being led by Bart Sheperd, the Senior Director of the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium and the co-leader of CalAcademy’s Hope for Reefs exploration initiative. He said “When we started doing these deep dives, seeing whole ecosystems nobody’s ever seen… I wanted to bring those to the public floor.”
Shepherd and his team invented the device, called SubCAS (Submersible Chamber for Ascending Specimens). It allows divers to bring fish to the surface in a small jar.
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