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It’s easy to think that all of the world’s frontiers have been explored by humans. But beneath the waves, there exists a whole other world of unscaled mountains.
Researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in California have created an updated topographical map of the seafloor called SRTM15+V2.0. Using newly processed satellite data, the team can pick up seafloor features with a greater subtly and accuracy than previous models, highlighting the presence of many new submarine mountains, known as seamounts, across the Earth’s seabed.
The precise number is not calculated, but the new resolution could detail between 5,000 and 10,000 new seamounts, according to New Scientist. It's hoped the research will add to the wider understanding of Earth's seafloor, one of the least understood biological habitats on Earth.
“[Earth’s] surface remains more poorly understood than that of many other planets, moons, and asteroids," the study authors write. "This lack of knowledge is unfortunate given that seafloor bathymetry is of fundamental importance in many aspects of earth and biological sciences."
Seamounts are a particularly interesting place for scientists to research as they are home to an incredible array of biodiversity. This is because they allow for a location where organisms can settle and grow, thereby providing other organisms and animals with a food source. In fact, some species are believed to be endemic to just a single seamount.
The slopes around seamounts are heavily populated by suspension feeders that strain food out from passing water, such as clams, krills, corals, and sponges. They gather here as the seamounts channel in currents and provide them with a steady supply of passing food, like a sushi conveyor belt. The ecology of the seamounts are likely even more diverse and complex; however, just a few hundred of them have ever been sampled for biodiversity.
Many of them are the remnants of extinct volcanoes. Once again, the seabed is still a relatively unknown frontier so the figures are not set in stone, but scientists estimate that there are more than 100,000 seamounts around the globe. Over 30,000 of those are found in the Pacific Ocean alone.
Sonar, once the go-to method for mapping the seafloor, has only mapped around 10 percent of the world’s seabeds. However, the relatively new method uses satellite data to pick up on subtle variations in Earth’s gravity field around the seamounts and sea surface heights to predict the presence of underwater features. Still, even with the latest technology, science’s understanding of the seafloor remains surprisingly scarce, despite it accounting for up to 71 percent of the globe’s surface area.
