WHICH IS THE INDIA S LARGEST ANIMAL IN THE OCEAN
Answers
Answer:
A 150ft siphonophore – the longest animal ever recorded – has been discovered during a scientific expedition exploring submarine canyons in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
Answer:
A 150ft siphonophore – the longest animal ever recorded – has been discovered during a scientific expedition exploring submarine canyons in the Indian Ocean off Western Australia.
The discovery of the massive gelatinous string siphonophore – a floating colony of tiny individual zooids that clone themselves thousands of times into specialized bodies that string together to work as a team – was just one of several unique during the expedition.
Thirty other new underwater species were also discovered by the research team working aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor.
The project was led by Dr. Nerida Wilson, chief scientist at the Western Australian Museum working in conjunction with researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Curtin University and Geoscience Australia.
Using an underwater robot – ROV SuBastian – the scientists completed 20 dives to depths of 4,500m during 180 hours of deep-sea exploration.
During the dives, the scientists collected giant hydroids, discovered large communities of glass sponges, and observed bioluminescent squid, long-tailed sea cucumber, and a number of other molluscs, barnacle and lobster species.
"We suspected these deep sea areas would be diverse but we’ve been blown away by the significance of what we have seen," says Wilson.
Owned and operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute – a philanthropic non-profit established by Eric and Wendy Schmidt in 2009 – Falkor is the only year-round ocean-going philanthropic research vessel in the world.
The ship and its ROV are both made available to the international scientific community at no cost, as long as scientists agree to make their discoveries publicly available.