My beloved home of Australia will be on show for the scientific community next week, as a deep-sea submersible descends to the depths to discover what the coral down there has to say about the planets climate change.
Australian and U.S. scientists will send the unmanned submersible some 2.5 kilometers down, off of the coast of Australian’s farthest point – Tasmania. Its target will be the coral that lies at these depths, depths which have hitherto been left alone by Australian and international scientists.
The joint project will film deep-sea coral; both living and fossilized, to study the growth rings which akin to trees, store century’s worth of information about the environment.
“Like tree rings, growth rings in corals indicate age. They also reflect changes over centuries and millennia in ocean chemistry and the ocean environment,” Ron Thresher from the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) said on Thursday.
Thresher, who will set sail on Friday, said in a statement that “Deep ocean corals are a litmus test of the deep ocean when it comes to identifying how temperature and salinity have changed over decades and centuries.”
He added that “We hope to track two influential elements on the global climate system — the formation of water masses at the Antarctic coast and the circulation of the Southern Ocean.”
The submersible Autonomous Benthic Explorer is on loan from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the United States, and will be launched from an Australian marine research ship during the 23-day voyage.
Another CSIRO scientist, Alan Williams, said the dive will allow scientists to view biodiversity at depths never before seen in Australian waters. “We have a good sense of the marine ecology around seamounts (submerged volcanoes) down to about 1,500m, but to be able to see and build an understanding of life beyond is a tremendously exciting prospect,” said Williams.
Reuters via ENN – Deep sea probe to track Australia climate change
Photo Courtesy of Skinned Mink via Flickr
About Joshua S Hill
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