Hidden Boundaries

The realm of Hidden Boundaries encompasses the Continental Margins and Abyssal Plains zones, those areas whose distance or inaccessibility have left them relatively inexplored.

Continental Margins

Although their distance from shore and depth have inhibited exploration of the margins until recently, we now know that the sloping margins are often unstable and changing. Improving technologies for fishing and oil exploration have push down the slopes to reveal challenges few imagined a decade ago. Sonar and seismic images of the lower margins reveal that apparently uniform slopes hide mixtures of rock, sand, mud, and methane hydrates. Underwater landslides that totally alter local habitats and powerful currents mix water layers and scrub the bottom. These energy rich areas likely have high biodiversity, but are poorly sampled until recently.

One CoML field project is planned for this zone:

Continental Margins: COMARGE
An integrated effort to document and explain biodiversity patterns on gradient-dominated continental margins, including the potential interactions among their variety of habitats and ecosystems.

Abyssal Plains

The spectrum of species in abyssal silt is rich in small organisms like protists, crustaceans, and various worms, but poor in larger animals like fish. The accumulation of marine snow in the abyssal silt, its sheer volume, and its relative stability for millions of years allowed diversity and abundance to develop. The variation of the diversity from place to place plus the extent of the plain make the plain a happy hunting ground for new species. The hunting should be especially good for molluscs and the roundworms called nematodes. Every technological improvement in diving will improve hunting in the darkness of the abyssal plain at the bottom of the ocean.

One CoML field project is planned for this zone:

Abyssal Plains: CeDAMar
A deep-sea project to document species diversity of abyssal plains to increase understanding of the historical causes and ecological factors regulating biodiversity and global change.