Revealing a Hidden Realm

Transcript of video:

Narrator:
On board the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Hudson, Federal Government and University Marine Scientists from Atlantic Canada are part of a collaborative research program studying Canada's first biodiversity corridor.

This corridor was set out to provide a natural laboratory for research on the total number and distribution of marine species with direct relevance to ocean's management in Atlantic Canada.

Canada's first biodiversity corridor is located in the northern gulf of Maine, extending from the intertidal shores of the lower Bay of Fundy across several offshore banks.

The corridor is approximately 90 kilometres wide along the coast and 220 kilometres at its outer boundary.

The Discovery Corridor is a foundation project of the Gulf of Maine Pilot Census of Marine Life Program, part of the International Census of Marine Life.

Dr. Paul Snelgrove:
The estimates on species that are undescribed in the oceans … some people think it may be in excess of 99 percent.  So in other words, we know a very small percentage of the biodiversity in the oceans and have never really been described by science and so the Sloan Foundation through the Census of Marine Life is trying to improve on that situation.

The Discovery Corridor fits well within this context and is a Canadian contribution, hopefully, to the Census.  And the idea here is that -- if you think about the fact that we know less than one percent, it seems like a very daunting problem and so if we try to tackle everything at once then it seems really overwhelming -- so what we're trying to do here is to focus biodiversity research on one geographic region in order to try and improve on that one percent and really get a better handle on our understanding of biodiversity for at least that one geographic region of the world.

Narrator:
The Gulf of Maine is characterized by a broad number and range of important historical and existing ocean uses and the corridor is not intended to become a single large marine conservation area.

Existing conservation management areas include the Northern Right Whale Conservation area in the approaches to the Bay of Fundy and a Coral Conservation Area in Northeast Channel, among others, both coastal and offshore.

The inventory of biodiversity is proceeding both at the species level with confirmation of species identification and genetic composition of key species, such as deep sea coral.

Dr. Ellen Kenchington:
One of my objectives for this cruise is to try to understand how these deep sea coral populations recruit.  We know they're really long lived so I'm interested in knowing whether they're recruiting in the area or whether larvae are transported from other coral populations and, if so, over what distances.

Narrator:
Species will also be studied at the seascapes level.  Seascapes refer to regions of the ocean which share similar depth, physical terrain, and water mass influences.

To begin to inventory such a large ocean area, scientists will have to conduct broad-ranging, seascape level surveys, as well as specific targeted sampling of particular species and populations.

Starting in 2004 with planning meetings sponsored by the Centre for Marine Biodiversity, several significant new projects have commenced that are focused within the Discovery Corridor.

In June 2005, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship Hudson conducted a preliminary mission to explore the ocean floor and water column in Jordan Basin, Coral Basin, and in the Northeast Channel to depths of 500 metres.

Scientists and students participated from the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, the St. Andrew's Biological Station, Huntsman Marine Science Centre, Dalhousie University, Acadia University, the University of New Brunswick, and the University of Maine.

Several berths were made available for non‑scientists and educators to experience and interpret marine research from their own perspective.

Following on from this successful first offshore cruise, collaborators from Dalhousie and Memorial University joined with government scientists to apply for funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council.

The scientists' goal was to bring ROPOS, a deep water research vehicle operated by the Canadian Scientific Submersible Facility, to the east coast.  ROPOS allows scientists to conduct exploration activity in waters down to 2500 metres to record hundreds of hours of high quality video footage, take still images, deploy monitoring equipment, and to retrieve samples.

Dr. Peter Lawton:
Well, for me on this cruise, one of the things that's been really remarkable about the technologies we have available to us now is that I can do the same kind of work that I would do myself either working along shore collecting individual organisms, as I did as a child, I can do that now with these technologies in deep water environments.

Dr. Anna Metaxas:
What we do in my lab is we look at larvae dispersal and factors that affect colonization of invertebrates on the ocean floor.

And, as a first step, what you need to do is sort of look at patterns of distribution of invertebrates and see if there's any correlation between the population of adults that we see and different habitat types.

So working with Peter Lawton, Peter will characterize the substring type and then we'll try to superimpose on that the patterns that we see of different organisms that are found in different substrates.  And, then from that, we try to understand how organisms disperse from one type of substrate to another.

Narrator:
This latest mission took place over a 14‑day period in July 2006.  It has yielded important new information on marine biodiversity patterns in the corridor, including new records on coral distribution in the Coral Conservation Area.

Dr. Evan Edinger:
My interest in this cruise is, is there are several different aspects of it.  One of them is to look for specimens of very, very old corals -- like this -- from which we can get oceanographic records extending back several hundred years.

Another interest is looking at the size frequency distribution of corals and, in particular, the habitats upon which corals grow.

Dr. Paul Snelgrove:
So what we're trying to do is to sample the seafloor using various coring devices which we push into the sediment; we bring them back to the surface either with a submersible or with the core that we used from the surface; and then we take the sediments out of these and examine them for the organisms that live in the sediments.

So what we're doing is sampling a very large area of seabed, but with a very small sampler.  So a real problem that we face is trying to extrapolate from that little area to the large area of the seafloor.

And so when you're thinking about strategies like MPA's or other sorts of conservation approaches, then we want to know different sorts of habitats and how they're favourable for different types of species and so how can we extrapolate from this small area of samples to the broader area of the sea floor in order to try and maintain the biodiversity that lives on the seafloors in Canada's oceans.

Narrator:
A number of existing coastal research projects, which operate from smaller research vessels in which use survey technologies of various levels of sophistication are also underway to provide new information on patterns of biodiversity in the coastal portion of the corridor.

Dr. Peter Lawton:
One of the studies we were recently involved in just this last week was capturing some footage in the Deer Island Passages in the vicinity of Casco Bay Island and we were able to get some initial footage of the benthic communities in this area.

We also use these kinds of systems to evaluate the distribution of commercial species, such as sea urchins, scallops, and lobsters, and then also for those studies of what's called marine biodiversity, the total number of species that make up a community.

Dr. Don Gordon:
For the last 15 years, we've been studying the effects of human activities on the seabed habitat and the communities.

One of the major lessons we've learned is the importance of really understanding the communities in their natural state.  Unfortunately, we don't have much of this type of information off Atlantic Canada.

I really find the Discovery Corridor very, very interesting because this is a program which will supply this information about the seabed over a large variety of habitats.  It has a lot of advantages going for it because it has excellent tools available in terms of the Hudson, in terms of our BIO sampling here, like video grab and cam pod, and also the availability of an ROV such as ROPOS.

And also, most important is the excellent team of people who have been assembled together to do this work from DFO, from Dalhousie University, and Memorial University, and this team includes a really large number of students who are going to be our scientists of the future.

Narrator:
The Discovery Corridor concept is intuitively simple in design and offers many opportunities to increase the awareness of marine biodiversity.

A successful feature of the first two discovery cruises has been the opportunity provided for graduate students, individual artists, and educators to participate in these research cruises and to learn first-hand from the scientists why they are pursuing this research.

In turn, the scientists are finding out how they might better communicate their science to the broader public.

Ms. Jessica Sameoto:
I would come again in an absolute heartbeat.  I have learned so much and I think it's mostly the motivation and the inspiration that a trip like this gives a graduate student to keep going forward and coming up with their own ideas, as well as even questioning those ideas that you've already read in a textbook.

Narrator:
Knowledge gained from the first discovery corridor and hopefully other candidate corridors is anticipated to yield insights into how particular seascapes and the biological communities within them respond to a variety of pressures.

These pressures can come from natural variability in the marine environment, as well as the affects of human use, such as fisheries and aquaculture development, or resource extraction.

As knowledge is gained of the biodiversity, represented within areas of the corridor, on the seabed, close to the seabed, and in the water column, we should be able to achieve a growing understanding and consensus on the best approaches to marine conservation, management, and sustained utilization of this ocean space.