None
EN
Revealing Roo Rise: OceanX Expedition Establishes a New Scientific Baseline for the High Seas
['Abdoulaye Ouedraogo']
Business Day Ghana
High Seas: Revealing Roo Rise, a 22-day scientific expedition aboard R/V OceanXplorer to investigate one of the eastern Indian Ocean’s most ecologically significant and under-characterized high seas regions.
Conducted in collaboration with Minderoo Foundation, Minderoo OceanOmics Centre at UWA, the Western Australian Museum, and the Living High Seas Initiative, the expedition surveyed two seamount features within Roo Rise.
Preliminary observations documented extensive sponge gardens and coral communities across Roo Rise, including large habitat-forming species and taxa recognized as indicators of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems [VMEs].
An unusual seafloor habitat consisting of probable early diagenetic carbonate colonized by abundant agglutinated foraminifera was documented during a Roo Rise dive.
What stood out was the diversity of coral and sponge habitats we encountered across the deep water environments of Roo Rise.