An international team of midwater experts on board Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too) discovered over two dozen new marine species on a recent expedition off the coast of Brazil in the tropical South Atlantic Ocean. The scientists used advanced technologies to explore the ocean’s midwater—the water between the sunlit layer and the seafloor—which is Earth’s largest and least explored habitable ecosystem. It can take scientists decades to identify and describe new species, but the combination of technology and expertise enabled the team to confirm these species as new within a matter of days.
The list consists of an amphipod, a type of crustacean related to crabs and lobsters; a gossamer worm that moves faster than scientists expect it to based on its body shape; nine jellyfish; seven siphonophores, colonial organisms related to jellyfish and corals; seven comb jellies or ctenophores, famous for the glittering cilia they use to swim; four larvaceans, tadpole-like creatures that live in mucus houses and are more closely related to humans than invertebrates; and two giant rhizarians, single-celled organisms visible to the naked eye.
“The largest habitat on Earth, the midwater, is filled with incredible animals we are only just starting to understand,” said the expedition’s chief scientist, Dr. Karen Osborn of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “I continue to be fascinated by the fantastic variety of solutions they have evolved to survive in this formidable environment, and that drives me to keep asking questions about our ocean.”
The team witnessed far more diversity and abundance of midwater organisms than they expected, said Osborn, including glass squid and a pelagic octopus feeding on a bright red jellyfish.
The ocean’s midwater is one of the most challenging areas on Earth to explore because of its inaccessibility and immense volume. The Sasakawa Peace Foundation’s Ocean Shot Research Grant Program funded two midwater programs that made this work possible, one based at the University of Western Australia and the other at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences, USA.
The technologies used to identify new species were a combination of imaging systems and genetic analyses.
The imaging systems included the DeepPIV (particle image velocimetry) and EyeRIS (remote imaging system) instruments, developed by the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute), which were attached to Schmidt Ocean Institute’s remotely operated vehicle (ROV) SuBastian. DeepPIV and EyeRIS are sophisticated, non-invasive tools for scanning marine animals; they use lasers to scan organisms and create 3D images of them. In addition, the team attached a shadowgraph camera from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) to the ROV, which can image the finer details of animals not visible in the 3D scans. The images help scientists describe the shape and internal structures of animals without having to collect them.
“It’s an incredible honor to not only view and experience this rare and inspiring midwater life, but also to be able to work towards describing and sharing that life broadly through the use of novel, non-invasive technologies,” said Dr. Kakani Katija, principal engineer of the Bioinspiration Lab at MBARI.
Many midwater animals are gelatinous, with soft, delicate bodies that are often damaged by traditional sampling methods. To address this challenge, the expedition used additional technologies that allowed scientists to observe animals in a controlled environment that mimics their natural habitat. These included a virtual reality chamber developed at the University of Western Australia and a “gravity machine” developed at Stanford University—a specialized microscope that functions as a hydrodynamic treadmill for studying microbes.
The team used another microscope developed at Stanford University to gain critical new insights into the physiology of midwater animals. The microscope, known as Squid, is an open-source, confocal microscope. Using Squid, the team achieved a first for research at sea and imaged living internal cellular structures in 3D. One of the organisms imaged was a large single-celled microbe called a protist. The microscope enabled the scientists to observe how the protist’s cellular structure interacted with its glass skeleton.
“This opens a new door for researching deep-sea physiology, linking cellular architectures to organism function. We can now witness live internal processes within these extreme organisms adapted to withstand immense pressure and darkness,” said Dr. Manu Prakash of Stanford University.
In tandem with the high-resolution imagery, the team sequenced genomes from collected specimens onboard the vessel, enabling them to rapidly identify new species under the leadership of Dr. Cheryl Ames of Tohoku University and Dr. John Burns of Bigelow Laboratory.
“The novel suite of technologies on this cruise is a glimpse into the future of marine biological science,” said Schmidt Ocean Institute’s Executive Director, Dr. Jyotika Virmani. “Schmidt Ocean Institute’s mission is to push technological advancement, and this was our third cruise in collaboration with this team of scientists and engineers to test and further develop this innovative midwater equipment. We look forward to a future in which scientists study marine life as elegantly as this team did—and in virtual reality.”
