By Grant Warkentin
Underwater volcanoes are unlikely nurseries for millions of deep-sea fish, a science expedition west of Vancouver Island has confirmed.
An annual science expedition off the Island’s west coast took a close look at the Endeavour Seamount for the first time, sending a remote-operated vehicle to the seafloor to explore, and to set up a permanent monitoring station.
It found a nursery for millions of Pacific White Skate and Boreal Skate eggs on the seamount, which is home to some of the most intensely venting hydrothermal systems in the world. The Endeavour Seamount is a 90-kilometre long ridge approximately 260 kilometres southwest of the Island.
It’s the second skate nursery discovered within Canada’s oceans; the first was discovered by the same annual scientific expedition in 2023 on the Ts’íidaa Seamount just south of Haida Gwaii, home of two underwater volcanoes. The discoveries have scientists reconsidering how life can not only survive but thrive in some of the most extreme underwater environments on earth.
Skates are a deep-sea bottom-feeding fish, living at depths greater than 3,000 metres. Researchers believe they are using the warm waters around the vents and volcanoes as nurseries because the warmer conditions allow their eggs to mature more quickly than in colder waters.
The annual NorthEast Pacific Deep Sea Exploration Project (NEPDEP) took place last year from September 4-18. It used the latest technology to map out the seafloor to depths greater than 11,000 metres.
Featured image: Highlights from dive MANTIS036 on Endeavour Seamount. (A) An adult male Boreal Skate, (B) Deep-sea Octopus among cobble, brittle stars, and skate eggs, (C) Blob Sculpin guarding eggs, (D) an adult female Pacific White Skate swimming along the seafloor strewn with skate eggs, (E) amphipods crawling along a Long-Clawed Crab’s face, presumably feeding on squid detritus as the crab eats a squid, (F) Long-Clawed Crab consuming a dying squid beside a pile of skate eggs, (G) an area with abundant skate eggs and marine “snow.” Image from NEPDEP / Fisheries and Oceans Canada
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