Isle Of Palms Magazine Spring/Summer 2019

17 www.IsleOfPalmsMagazine.com | www.ILoveIOP.com | www.IOPmag.com T ry to imagine a towering hillside nearly five stories taller than the iconic steeple of St. Matthew’s Church in downtown Charleston. Next, think about that colossus 85 miles long – vast enough to stretch unbroken from Mount Pleasant to Conway. Now let your mind’s eye transport that massive mound 160 miles off the South Carolina coast and submerge it to the ocean floor half a mile deep, where the pressure would crush a beer can with trash-compactor-like reliability, and it’s so pitch dark that a fish couldn’t see a fin in front of its face. Oh, and did we mention that this gargantuan undersea mound is composed entirely of coral? That’s right: a living marine animal. The skeletons of some varieties are considered to be “organic jewelry” and have been used in elegant necklaces, cameos and rings since before the time of dynastic Egypt more than 4,000 years ago. That’s exactly what “Deep Search 2018” scientists discovered – much to their amazement – when a team from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the Bureau of Energy Management (BOEM), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), seven academic institutions and a private company set out to explore sea floor mounds spotted through sonar mapping along South Carolina’s coast. The study’s purpose is to investigate three primary habitats: deep-water coral, canyons and methane seeps in the area. Researchers want to learn about animals that live there and understand the oceanographic, geologic and geochemical makeup of the waters. Their investigation required several missions aboard the manned deep-sea research submersible Alvin, owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. What the scientists had expected to find was a series of sea floor mounds, perhaps topped with some living coral. What they actually found was a series of mounds composed entirely of coral: whitish lophelia pertusa coral thriving atop the skeletons of long-dead coral possibly dating back as far as 100,000 The bright red squat-lobster is often seen among the live coral colonies, with arms raised to grab anything edible that passes by. Image courtesy of NOAA. Launching Alvin into the sea. Note the sampling basket at the forward part of the sub with the sampling equipment attached. Image courtesy of Acid Horizon (2018).