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Deepseawaters Home Deep Sea Explorations
Exploring Celebes Sea
Exploring The Inner Space Of The Celebes Sea
September 27 - October 16, 2007
This
expedition takes us to unexplored waters south of the Philippine
Islands, in search of the strange, and possibly unknown, fishes,
jellyfish, squids and shrimp that live in the dark deep waters
of the Celebes Sea.
Surrounded
by much shallower ocean waters, the Celebes plunges
to over 5,000 meters, and in these waters there may well be
species that have evolved in isolation from other surrounding
waters, waiting to be discovered with modern exploration tools.
They will be diving in the middle of the richest marine environment
on Earth - the "coral triangle" of Southeast Asia.
This region, including the Philippines, Malaysia
and Indonesia, is known to have the highest species
diversity of shallow water marine animals.
The same may be true for deep-water creatures, but nobody
knows yet. Using a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) that can
dive to 3,000 meters, they will get High-Definition video
and still pictures, and collect specimens to bring back for
study.
With multiple large trawl nets, they plan to collect even
more samples. Baited cameras moored to the bottom will snap
photos and video of big animals attracted to the free meal.
Up in the warm surface waters they will go SCUBA diving to
film and collect the delicate zooplankton.
Working together with colleagues from the Philippines, they
will use all these samples, videos, images and data to increase
our understanding of the biological composition and the nature
of the deep midwater environment of the Celebes Sea, and compare
it with what is known about other deep-sea regions around
the world.
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