mapping
One of the main missions of the Deep-Sea Research Centre is the application of seafloor acoustics for mapping the ocean floor. Mapping the seafloor is a fundamental mode of observation used in oceanographic research and serves as a critical component for understanding marine ecosystems and guiding informed ocean management decisions.
Although 23.4% of the seafloor of the world ocean is mapped to a high resolution, these mapped areas are mostly located along the continental margin, and we live in surprising ignorance of the deep ocean–the largest habitat for life on earth. We are committed to expanding our understanding of the deep ocean by mapping the ocean floor, discovering new species, assessing marine biodiversity, and charting deep-sea habitats. We specialise in abyssal (3,000-6,000m) and hadal (6,000-11,000m) depths representing the deepest 70% of the oceans, the most extreme marine frontiers.
seafloor Geomorphology and habitat characterisation
Approximately only 23% of the ocean floor is mapped to a high resolution. Our team has access to two research vessels, DSSV Pressure Drop and Pangaea Ocean Explorer. Pressure Drop is equipped with a Kongsberg EM124 multibeam echosounder and the Pangaea with an EM304. One of the most important products we can get from high-resolution bathymetric data is the unprecedented seascape geomorphology at an unprecedented level of detail.
As different geomorphic features (e.g., seamounts, deep-sea ridges, steep cliffs, etc.), can condition a number of environmental characteristics, such as exposure to currents and waves, nutrient availability, substrate types, erosion, or sediment deposition, they often provide a range of spatiotemporal influences on the habitat suitability of an area for benthic fauna. Therefore, characterising seafloor geomorphology has significant importance in understanding the bio and geodiversity of the hadal trenches.
ecology
Much of our research focuses on ecology: the interaction of animals with one another and their physical environment over space and time. We use non-destructive video sampling techniques such as baited landers and manned submersibles to survey the distribution, relative abundance and diversity of deep-sea organisms. Presently, our core ecological projects focus on fishes, benthic macroinvertebrates and crustaceans.
Manned submersibles provide the unique opportunity to undertake in-situ visual surveys of organisms to full ocean depth and provide the scientists onboard unprecedented access to explore multiple habitats in a single a dive. We use these vessels to understand the distribution and habitat association of organisms and they are a powerful tool to survey specific habitats in detail. For example, we have surveyed opposing sides of an active trench to understand how differences in geology, seafloor instability, and geomorphology contribute to the assemblage of macroinvertebrates and differences in their functional traits. We have also used submersible dives to explore the impacts of anthropogenic disturbances including the recovery of a large-scale anthropogenic sediment disturbance at 6500 m or how plastic bags alter the micro-topography of the seafloor at hadal depths and the implications for benthic organisms.
Video cameras and fish traps attached to our fleet of baited landers allow spatially balanced surveys of hadal trenches and to understand the global distribution and connectivity of hadal snailfish and cusk eels.
A global assessment of fishes at lower abyssal and upper hadal depths (5000 to 8000 m)
Fishes of the hadal zone including new species, in situ observations and depth records of Liparidae
conservation
Australia has the third largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world and 40% of this is protected in a network of Marine Parks. We recently described the current protection of Australia’s deep-sea and found 56% of the area with Australia’s Marine Parks is deeper than 3000m. Despite this, Australia’s local capacity to undertake deep-sea research has been limited historically. Much of Australia’s deep-sea is also located in the Indian Ocean and at the doorstep for our research group. This, coupled with our initiative to build full ocean depth landers has allowed us to collaborate with Parks Australia to explore and document deep-sea habitats in Australian Marine Parks.
Bioaccumulation of persistent organic pollutants in the deepest ocean fauna
Deep-sea plastics compilation #plasticfreejuly
Genetics
Our centre aims to expand on our current knowledge of the diversity and demography of hadal fauna through integrative taxonomy, sample beyond single, isolated deep-sea features to examine how population-level dynamics are shaped by topography, depth and geography, as well as to expand our research from barcoding studies to multi-locus phylogenomic studies that can investigate the molecular evolution of our collected hadal fauna. Together, this work will allow us to understand how these geomorphologically complex hadal features have facilitated in-situ speciation events because of long-term geographic isolation or illuminate multi-ocean distributions.
The order Amphipoda, particularly scavenging amphipods, has emerged as a model taxon for understanding drivers of diversity and ecology across the hadal zone as they can be readily and consistently recovered with baited landers. We are currently addressing questions of genetic connectivity, species diversity and phylogeographic structure between multiple deep-sea features and from various hadal and abyssal amphipod species and genera.
oceanography
Our oceanographic research involves understanding the physical environment of the hadopelagic using full-depth CTD (Conductivity-Temperature-Depth) measurements, current meters and other oceanographic sensors. Synthesis of this oceanographic data contributes to understanding the ecology of trenches and the hadal zone.
Over the next few years the Deep-Sea Research Centre’s oceanography focus will be on mixing and circulation surrounding trenches including bottom water ventilation, water-mass characteristics, population connectivity of species and their linkages to environmental conditions such as global abyssal circulation, and long-term monitoring of bottom currents, water properties and sediment flux via permanent observatories in WA Marine Parks.
Environmental HUMANITIES
Because it the ocean is uninhabitable to humans, it is resistant to established forms of human knowledge-making and therefore understanding. This is all the more pertinent when it comes to the deep sea, which is often disregarded as a place entirely irrelevant to human life. Guided by a cynicism towards anthropocentrism, we draw upon the environmental and blue humanities to consider how the deep sea relates to current conversations around material feminisms, multispecies ethnography, and tentacular thinking.
By incorporating the (post)humanities into the rhythms of our multidisciplinary research centre, we hope to overcome what we perceive is a phenomenological gap between humanities scholars and field scientists. We address the multitude of calls by critical theorists and object-oriented ontologists to stop thinking about the ocean in terms of its flat construction in the discourses and instead imagine it as a place with not only depth, but also rhythmic motion. In working across these disciplines, our work investigates the role of fear in affecting public perception of the deep sea as well as the phenomelogical concept of the deep sea itself.
Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: why don't people care about the deep sea?
Reply to: People do care about the deep sea. A comment on Jamieson et al. (2020)
literary and media studies
For the vast majority of people, interaction with the deep sea is limited to its representation in popular culture. This includes natural history documentaries, news articles, video clips, and fiction such as horror film, literature, and children's edutainment. However, the deep sea is often universally represented as a scary and unknown space, which is not conducive to meaningful connections to the largest habitat on earth. This in turn affects support for conservation and effective stewardship of the deep oceans.
Our investigation considers the representation of the deep sea across a broad range of literature and media, both fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and realism. This includes Blue Planet, Aliens of the Abyss, SpongeBoB Squarepants, Octonauts, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, the work of HG Wells, the work of Guillermo del Toro, the work of HP Lovecraft, and deep-sea video games. By utilising posthumanist, ecofeminist, and poststructuralist reading practices and critical discourse analysis, we consider the sensationalised and scary ways in which the deep sea is constructed in the popular imagination, and how it compares to the lived experience of scientists.
Sleeping with the fishmen: Reimagining the Anthropocene through oceanic-chthonic kinships