Page 107 - GIS for Science, Volume 3 Preview

HISTORIC SCIENTIFIC SURVEYS
The general lack of exploration of the most remote high seas—compared with waters closer to shore—is evident in that one-third of all recorded species on the high seas is represented by a single record in the most comprehensive repository of global ocean biodiversity, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System. For the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges, however, the Ocean Biogeographic Information System contains a relatively dense collection of records, including more than 14,000 occurrences of 930 species.4 This number includes numerous records of ecologically important species such as whales, sea turtles, sharks, and reef-building corals, which is quite unique for an area on the high seas.
These species records result from various scientific expeditions, most notably a series of Russian expeditions that surveyed the ridges from 1973 to 1987. The
Chilean National Oceanographic Committee surveyed the high seas portions of the ridges in 1999 and 2016. And in 2019, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology led an expedition that included Chilean and other partners.
These scientific explorations noted that the marine biodiversity of this region is composed of a high proportion of endemic species, or species that are not known to occur anywhere else on Earth. For many groups of organisms, nearly half of the species are endemic to the region, the highest level of marine endemism known anywhere on Earth. Furthermore, previous surveys noted that every seamount of these ridges appears to have a unique community composition, with few species shared between opposite ends of the ridges. This finding highlights the need to protect all the ridge features to safeguard representative biodiversity.
Russian survey vessel Ikhtiandr.
Professor Mesyatzev
Professor Shtokman
Mirai
Cabo de Hornos
Compared to many still virtually unxplored regions of the world’s high seas, the international waters of the Salas y Gómez and Nazca Ridges have been surveyed by a series of Russian, Chilean, and Japanese expeditions beginning in the early 1970s. These vessels carried the latest technologies of the day. Data from these expeditions have since made it into GIS databases and applications such as Esri’s Ocean Basemap, which can be accessed at GISforScience.com.
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