“In some sense, it is the ultimate reason for the public aquarium to exist.”īecause it is so challenging to access and study, deep-sea biology is still in its infancy. “They're basically setting up a long-term laboratory for those scientists to be able to study those organisms,” Muka said. This combination of public outreach and basic science is a hallmark of the Monterey Bay Aquarium. In addition to educating the public, it serves as a reconstructed ecological system that allows scientists to study deep-sea environments without the expense and difficulty of submarine voyages. The exhibit is more than a technological marvel or a way to show off exotic animals. “It was used in food production, for stripping gasses out of liquids.” “We had to use equipment that I don’t think has ever been used in aquariums before,” Knowles said. Some displays required developing new methods to strip oxygen out of seawater. Many deep-sea creatures from an area known as the oxygen minimum zone need as little as 5% of the oxygen found at the ocean’s surface to survive. While it took years of trial and error to figure out each deep-sea creature’s specific requirements, achieving low-enough oxygen levels proved to be a particular challenge. “They already know more about those deep-sea animals than we've ever known about them ever.” “They're the only people right now that know how you can push these animals, like the plasticity of their pressure needs at the moment,” said Muka. Drilling, mining, and fishing can put corals, sponges, and the animals they shelter at risk. Corals and sponges that grow on underwater mountains, or "seamounts" develop so slowly that damaged habitats could take centuries to recover. While the deep sea is known for its high pressures, the aquarium scientists found that some deep-sea creatures could survive the ascent if they were given time to acclimate to the lower pressure and higher temperatures, not unlike the delicacy required when human divers return from high-pressure depths. “It probably couldn't have been done even 10 or 15 years ago. “We should be completely astounded by the technological things that they've done,” said Samantha Muka, aquarium historian and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. Knowles and other scientists tinkered with the acidity, light and temperature to achieve conditions that were just right for each deep-sea animal on display. “It’s one of the most delicate jellies in the world. “This is the bloody belly comb jelly, Lampocteis,” Knowles said. Tommy Knowles, a jellyfish expert and one of the scientists who developed the exhibit, described his favorite midwater creature - a crimson dome bedazzled with ridges of strobing rainbow lights. A goopy string adorned with stingers - a creature known as a siphonophore - floats suspended in its tank. In the midwater gallery, screens show dazzling ROV footage of shimmering bioluminescence. The Japanese spider crab is the size of a small dog. Visitors can meander through a darkened gallery of tanks displaying gelatinous creatures from the shallower end of the midnight zone, known as the midwater, which ranges from 650 feet to 3,300 feet deep. Some parts of the canyon are more than a mile deep, and the canyon comes remarkably close to shore. The exhibit takes visitors on a descending tour of the abyss, starting with a model of Monterey Bay’s underwater canyon. Monterey Bay researchers have experimented for over a decade with ways to bring elusive deep-sea life safely up from the depths. The deep sea is rich with strange and often bioluminescent creatures, many of them delicate and unable to withstand the drastic transition to the low pressure, bright lights and high temperatures at the surface. The midnight zone is cold and dark, and can only be explored by remote operating vehicles (ROVs) controlled by pilots in submarines.
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