Mountains Under the Waves

The world’s longest mountain range is actually in the middle of the ocean – the mid-Atlantic ridge, at more than 40,000 miles long. But who knows about these mountains? How high are they? Where are they? What lives on them?

This week, Hannah Stitfall is joined by South African actress and TV presenter Amanda Du Pont, who spent two weeks on a Greenpeace ship on a research expedition to Mount Vema in 2019. And she welcomes marine scientist Lucy Woodall back into the studio, who’s led expeditions to seamounts all around the world.

There’s another update from the Arctic Sunrise en-route to the Galapagos Islands. They’ve made a stop-off at the ocean mountains near Galapagos.

Lucy Woodall (Intro): Experiencing a sea mount, which is like a mountain under the ocean is really unique. Coming out of hot, humid air into the cool waters that are shallow with lots of life, and then going down even further into our deep sea. Now at 200 metres, we’ve lost all of the light from the surface. But we’re starting to see the seabed, the top of the sea mount, they’ve got a typical witch hat like shape, they can be steep, they can have plateaus, the rich tapestry of colours and textures, the fish that accumulate on the tops of the sea mounts, looking for food, having places to live and hide. This is a truly unique experience.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, a podcast series all about the oceans and the mind blowing life within them. I’m Hannah Stitfall, and in this episode: Mountains Under the Waves.

Lucy Woodall:
Starting in the absolute depths of the ocean coming all the way up and then actually bear continuing up to the very top.

Hannah Stitfall:
Did you know that the world’s longest mountain range is found in the middle of the ocean, and that the world’s highest mountain sits on the ocean’s floor. And it’s even higher than Mount Everest.

Lucy Woodall:
…pinks and yellows and oranges, and maybe you’re really lucky, a massive soft coral fan.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is Oceans: Life Under Water, Episode Five.

I’m delighted to have Lucy Woodall back in the studio with me. Lucy is a marine biologist who studied these fascinating underwater mountains in the Atlantic, Indian and southern oceans. Welcome back, Lucy!

Lucy Woodall:
Aww, lovely to be back! Thank you.

Hannah Stitfall:
So I’ve heard about sea mounts, and they’re underwater mountains, yeah. But what’s the difference? What’s the difference between the underwater mountains and mountains we have on land?

Lucy Woodall:
That’s a great question! We live here on land breathing oxygen seeing mostly multiple kilometres ahead of us, except on a really cloudy day. We’ve got good visibility on land. And we know all the way around us. We’ve got landscapes that are flat, we’ve got mountains, we’ve got valleys and canyons, we’ve got rivers. And we understand this implicitly, because we see them, maybe not every day, but certainly during our lives. All of those types of things also happen below the ocean.

We don’t necessarily understand that, because we don’t see it with our eyes, because we’ve got this blue surface of the water that goes up and down in waves. But otherwise, it’s this sort of this flat 2-D space, right? It’s only when we think about the ocean as a 3-D space, and our sea floor as a continuation from the land that we can start to understand all those complexities. So the sea mounts that we were talking about today. They’re like our mountains, they have ranges… So I like to think that there is really a really lovely analogy between mountains on land, sea mounts under the ocean. Of course, they’re different, because they’re surrounded in this amazing saltwater. The life and the conditions they experience are going to be different. But it’s really as complex as we can see in the land near to where we live.

Hannah Stitfall:
So would you say that there are actual there are mountain ranges under the ocean?

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you’re totally right.

Hannah Stitfall:
Is that is crazy in itself, yeah. You know, because when you see a mountain range they are they’re so big. And to think that we actually have them underneath us and the ocean as well. They can’t really comprehend it, you know, so amazing.

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, it is really fascinating. So the best example of that is are the Emperor, seamounts that is just a continuation of the Hawaii Island chain. Right. So those islands of Hawaii, essentially, they’re just like sea mounts that have stuck their heads up out of the ocean. So you see the islands as like the top hat on the seamount and they continue under the water being called Emperor seamounts.

For seamounts to actually have that name because everything’s got, you know, it’s got an official definition, they have to be over 1000 metres from the sea floor. So you can have seamounts that come up very close to the sea surface. Or you can have the tops, super, super deep still just depending how tall they are, and what the seabed is like, where they start.

Hannah Stitfall:
And how many are there in our oceans? Which, which have you been to?

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, so I’ve been lucky enough to go to sea mounts in the Atlantic, sort of around the mid Atlantic and the Mid Atlantic ridge. And also in the Indian Ocean, especially the Southwest Indian Ocean ridge. Again, so two ridges, because it’s hard, it’s a hard lump coming out of the ocean. But it’s got lots of different colours. It’s a really rich mosaic of bare rock, maybe some cobble crossed, some sponge gardens, some curl framework, and then you remember all the colours down there as well. So you’ve got a rich texture, but you’ve got pinks, and yellows, and oranges. And maybe if you’re really lucky, a massive, soft coral fan, which is great polyps often pink colours as well. So you get down there, and you’re just like, Wow, you know, this is almost like you’re flying through a forest.

Hannah Stitfall:
And what sort of species do you see around the seamounts?

Lucy Woodall:
Great question. And I’m gonna say it totally depends, right? What we know. And what’s valuable about sea mounts? Is they’re lumps that stick out of a flat seabed. Right? Right. Go with me on this, right. So that’s a fundamental first thing. So what does that mean? It means that our ocean currents are disturbed. So rather than just like running down a high street, it’s got to negotiate all the little buildings or whatever, right? So there’s more turbulence in the water. And there’s more mixing of the waters because the layers get all disjointed. So that’s the first thing. Second thing is that the majority of the sea floor is covered by very thick but fine sediment. So things like cold water coral, and yes, there is cold water coral, it doesn’t just have to hang out in the shallows in the tropics. So cold water corals and soft corals are sponges, they will have to attach to something hard. So of course, they can’t live where there’s lots of sediment if there’s no rocks for them to attach to. But on seamounts that’s rock that’s coming out so they can attach there. Some amazing fans. I mean, think of a coral fan that is more than three metres across. It’s absolutely huge. And this is hundreds of years old. And once corals have got a foothold and start to live somewhere, then that creates lots of tiny little holes and safe spaces for lots of other animals to live. So things like snails, brittle stars, crabs, and little lobsters will live in this framework. Something I was quite interested to see was a glass sponge, which is just like little spicules, so little tiny pieces of silica in that hexagonal shapes. So imagine your, your fence, your garden fence at home with tiny little hexagons. Well, that’s what it looks like in sort of a long sort of cucumber shape, white coloured.

And then the first time I saw this, I was like this little pink things in there, what’s the pink things. And then I was told this amazing story, that inside these glass sponges, there is a male and a female shrimp. And they live in there all of their lives, collecting the detritus that the sponges have filter-feeded and you know providing some nutrients for the sponges themselves. So they’re working together. But I just had no idea that with these types of relationships down there on the sea floor.

Hannah Stitfall:
And what was the first sea mount you ever saw? When did you first visit your first kind of you know, mountain range under the sea and be like, Wow!

Lucy Woodall:
Now my background is actually as a geneticist of seahorses!

Hannah Stitfall:
Fabulous!

Lucy Woodall:
I have never seen a seahorse on a sea mount because I think I would be absolutely in heaven at that point.

Hannah Stitfall:
They would they be… because how many species of seahorse have we got, about 47 known?

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah.

Hannah Stitfall:
Is seamounts not it’s not somewhere they’d hang out?

Lucy Woodall:
Well, I found some close relatives. Yeah, so seahorses that a sort of fish that are closely related to Seahorses, notopogons to their friends. And they’re kind of cool they have their they have a really kind of a long snout like some seahorses do. And they sit in the water column with their noses down and go sort of up and down almost like a pogo stick. Maybe how they got their name. Anyway, that’s what I like to think. So they’re closely related to seahorses, but not seahorses, they look sort of more traditional fish shape. We can’t say the seahorses aren’t there. They might be they’re just actually really hard to see.

But that brings up a really good point. Because although there are 10s of 1000s of seamounts across the ocean, we as humans, have only collected information for maybe 100. But we’ve only actually looked and observed just a handful of those.

So, we’re trying to understand what’s in the ocean, what’s on these mountains, but only having a tiny snapshot because seamounts are very different. You know, you have some in the tropics and some in polar waters. We can see some of them that come up to just a few 10s of metres maybe, and some the summits are down at over 1000 metres. So the conditions you get are really different. So when we talk about seamounts, it’s one word, but within that there’s a lot of complexity and a lot of differences. It’s like saying a city is like this. We know across the globe that cities look really different. Well, that’s a really similar thing to our seamounts.

Hannah Stitfall:
Yeah, I guess it’s like, you know, comparing the Highlands of Scotland to Mount Everest, they’re still mountains, but they’re very, very different.

Lucy Woodall:
Exactly, yes. Yeah. And if you only had the Highlands of Scotland, and you had Everest, then you really wouldn’t know what to make of this thing. That’s called a mountain. Right? You know, it’d be really hard because they’re really, they’re really extremely different.

Hannah Stitfall:
This is an incredible fact that only found out today, the world’s highest mountain is actually in Hawaii, and it sits on the ocean floor and rises up for 10,200 metres. Now that’s a mile higher than Everest. That’s amazing, isn’t it?

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, it really is. And I think with a fact like that, you can start to appreciate just the enormity of the features that are coming out of our seabed. When we think about mountains, we need to kind of take our brains away from things like Everest that we as land dwellers would think about, and really think about where do they start? I work on mountains all the time. But they’ve only got a few metres above the sea, when you have a look at them as islands. So some places that I’ve had the privilege enough to work with some shapes, they show our colleagues in Seychelles, right. So they start down on the sea floor and come all the way up. And then they’ve got little, little island hats on.

A really good example of this is the Hawaii chain, right? You know, starting in the absolute depths of the ocean coming all the way up, and then actually, they’re continuing up to the very top. So when we’re really thinking about mountains, per se mountains, on land, mountains under the ocean, we really have to get beyond thinking that mountain stop at that sea level. Because then we need, we can imagine that just the enormity of that space below the water.

Hannah Stitfall:
So I mean, the tallest mountain in the world isn’t on land, it’s in the sea.

Lucy Woodall:
Well, it depends on how you want to define it. Right.

Hannah Stitfall:
But I want to move on is that. Decided! That is that is pretty amazing, though, that we just don’t you just don’t think of mountains being in the sea. And the fact that the seamounts that, you know, you spend a lot of time studying have all of these different life forms and their own ecosystems that you were talking about the cold water coral – is fascinating. It’s something that I guess I myself don’t see every day and I guess not all of our listeners do either.

Lucy Woodall:
No, absolutely. And I don’t I don’t see that every day either! I just know that it’s there. But I think that there’s lots of stuff about our planet that we don’t see. But we care about. We ask ourselves, why would we care about the corals or the cold water corals are there, because they’re filter feeders, they’re getting nutrients being washed past them in the currents, the very mixed waters around seamounts bringing in lots of nutrients. And this obviously creates like a little oasis in the ocean. So it’s kind of cool to think of them like that. There’s also some evidence that things like sharks and whales and other large organisms can use seamounts almost like little stepping stones to help them find their way in migrations and I think that’s really cool to think about seamounts and their value, not just just us as humans, but then how that’s translated into multiple other organisms and allowing our planet to function as it does.

Hannah Stitfall:
And how do whales use the seamounts as stepping stones?

Lucy Woodall:
That’s further studies that are ongoing think it could be something about some memories, some directions of currents. So there’s all these different senses and senses that go on, both obviously, for us and our technical equipment, but also for our animals in the ocean, who are much more finely tuned into being able to respond to some of these different parameters.

Hannah Stitfall:
Oh, absolutely. I mean, there’s was the protein cryptochrome isn’t there. And it’s thought that at one point, we humans were able to sense the Earth’s magnetic field more in our vision and almost like a sixth sense, but it’s how birds have it to migrate, turtles have it to migrate, they found that red foxes will use cryptochrome to even hunt, depending on the Earth’s magnetic field. So I think when we think about whales using these huge big structures underneath the water as stepping stones, they’ve got a whole other world of senses. They’re finely tuned into their environment and surroundings. And of course, they’re going to use landmarks, you know, like we do, we use landmarks because we can’t see this magnetic field anymore, because we’ve lost that because of iPads and lights and things.

So Lucy, how do these mountains actually form?

Lucy Woodall:
So what we see with sea mounts is that the majority of them have come from extinct volcanoes. And this can happen in two ways. This can either be something like magma being pushed up, and that’s why we see that kind of conical shapes, right? They’re like a witch’s hat, if you can imagine that under the water. But in some areas, we can also see them in subducting zones. So that’s when one plate disappears under another and the other one rises up, and then the bit of the magma comes up. And that area then creates a seamount. So it kind of depends. But also, once they’ve actually formed themselves, they don’t just finish and they’re like that forever. The currents and the environment in which they’re sitting in have a real difference as well. So they can erode over time. They can sometimes, if with sea level change, then sometimes come up to the surface, and then maybe grow some tropical corals on them and then become a coral reef and an island.

Hannah Stitfall:
And I suppose this happens over hundreds of 1000s, if not millions of years.

Lucy Woodall:
Absolutely! From the formation of the earth till today, the shapes and their sizes are always changing.

(whale songs)

Hannah Stitfall:
We’re going to come back to Lucy in just a second because I’ve got someone else here who’s travelled to these incredible mountains under the sea. I’m really excited to be joined by South African actress model and TV presenter, Amanda Dupont.

Now Amanda uses her vast global platform to engage her followers in the future of the oceans. And in 2019, she went on a research expedition to the Vema seamounts, which are just off the coast of South Africa. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome Amanda. She’s beaming in now to us from South Africa. Hello!

Amanda Dupont:
Hello Hannah! What a beautiful introduction.

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you so much for being here today.

Amanda Dupont:
My pleasure. Thank you for being here.

Hannah Stitfall:
So listen, I mean, you are so busy. You’re an actress, you’re a model, you’re a TV presenter… where do you find time to campaign for the oceans as well?

Amanda Dupont:
I could ask you the same thing, but I think this environment that we’re so busy in, if we don’t look after it, we have no way to be busy. So I think for me, it’s just about like living with purpose. We have these amazing platforms, you and I and it’s like what are we doing consciously to let people know that the earth is really in trouble. The planet is in trouble. The seas are in trouble. Like, if we’re not gonna listen now there is no earth anymore. Do you know what I mean?

Hannah Stitfall:
Yeah, completely. So where did your deep love and connection for the oceans? Where did that all start?

Amanda Dupont:
I think one is, one is being super spiritual. So one of the first things God created was the oceans, by the way. And the second is, water has always given me a greater sense of peace. No matter how much the world can get busy and hectic and we get caught in the start achieving goals mindset is that water has always brought me peace. And I think from the age of seven years old and primary school, I was already part of cleanup communities that were cleaning up waste pollution around our local rivers. So there was already a passion since I was really young. I mean, to choose from what, seven years old to go, in my weekend time to go and clean up a local river. That means that I really had that passion. So I think I have a passion for seeing nature in its purest form. And I love visiting parts of the ocean that are untouched by human beings. And what does that tell you? That means that usually when human beings come as much as we come to develop, we also come to destroy. And we’ve got to be cognisant of that is like, our development can be development. Sure. But you know, what are the consequences of our development? Are we developing in a conscious way? You know, we can create schools and infrastructure and toilets and proper structures for people to live. But what are the side effects? Did we have the correct channels? Where is this waste of these toilet systems being dumped in? Is it in our oceans? Yes, we need oil and fuel to survive for our cars to go, for things to be powered up. But where the hell are you getting it from?! Is it from deep sea mining??

Hannah Stitfall:
Your right, its really quite scary.

Amanda Dupont:
Yeah. So it’s cool to develop. I’m saying it’s cool for us to be modern. But can we start being cognisant of what the side effects of that can we do this consciously? It’s like, it’s cool to have electricity… like in Africa, we have an electricity problem. And a lot of people are not getting enough power. But can we start to have green energy? Go on guys. Like can it be a normalised thing and not a super wealthy thing that people can afford? Because it’s like, getting too much of the same thing. We are part of the people who are supporting the problem. The reason we can’t get treaties signed because they want to be able to freely get oil and deepsea mine because we we want more. Sorry, I get very preachy.

Hannah Stitfall:
It’s alright, honey, it’s alright, honey, you preach away. We’re here for it. We’re so here for it!

But listen, so in 2019 yeah, you went aboard the Arctic Sunrise, and you went to visit the Vema seamounts, but how long did it take you to get there? I mean, whereabouts? Paint us a little picture of the journey out there.

Amanda Dupont:
So we left off the boards of Cape Town. That’s where we started, we travelled about 1000 kilometres, if I’m correct, which is about six days, five nights to get to mount Vema. So the sea mountains are usually quite a bit away from the ocean front, you know, the waters become so much rougher there, because it is in the middle of the ocean. So once you’re there, you get to understand why such beautiful places are so far away from as human beings who don’t know how to look after them.

Hannah Stitfall:
So it took you six days?

Amanda Dupont:
Six days, yes, I was there two weeks. So I think we only docked about two or three days. And then I made my way back. So it’s quite a journey.

Hannah Stitfall:
What was it like being on the ship for a couple of weeks?

Amanda Dupont:
It was absolutely horrible.

Hannah Stitfall:
That’s the wrong answer!

Amanda Dupont:
You know, I believe in telling people the truth, I felt a grave responsibility, one to show what all the people who work for Greenpeace are doing and choosing to do every day of their lives, to create change, the fact that they’re going to those lengths. All they’re trying to do is gather marine biologists, scientists, to gather proof to show other people how bad things were really getting. So for me to decide to go to Mount Vema, I knew it wasn’t going to be fabulous. And we went with the Arctic Sunrise, which means it’s actually made for, I think, the Arctic. So it’s made for ice. It’s an icebreaker. And that ship was flopping it was like a 90 degree shot. It kept flopping at 180 degrees because it wasn’t meant for the ocean. It’s not, like it’s made for ice, which means the whole crew was nauseous the whole time, sick the whole time. And I swear!

Hannah Stitfall:
Were you seasick.

Amanda Dupont:
I was vomiting every single day. We would be at breakfast and the ship of flop and all of our food would be on the floor and minutes and there was like an automated everybody quickly cleans everything up from the floor. It was like normal. The fact that I was so sick I thought which which President, which minister do I know? Send him emergency chopper to come get me because I was like I love the ocean. I love Greenpeace. I couldn’t do this anymore. But I stayed. You know why stayed? They were on this trip for 10 months! 10 months they won this trip and I was crying for two weeks. So there are people who are dedicated to the cause. People like you and I whose responsibility is to elevate what they’re trying to say and to share it with our followers to share it to the people and our surroundings.

Hannah Stitfall:
So I’ve read that Mount Vema formed 11 to 15 million years ago. That’s crazy old, isn’t it?

Amanda Dupont:
That’s crazy.

Hannah Stitfall:
That is crazy. And also, I’ve got here that it’s as high as 767 giraffes piled on top of each other. I mean…

Amanda Dupont:
Could you imagine? I say, I’m like, giraffes stacked on top of each other. That’s a lot!

Hannah Stitfall:
That’s, that’s pretty tall. So that that is 4600 metres high. That’s a proper mountain, isn’t it?

Amanda Dupont:
It’s a proper mountain.

Hannah Stitfall:
It’s amazing.

Amanda Dupont:
So a seamount is basically underwater mountain. That’s what it is. And it is nothing like you imagine going to that depth of the ocean, there is nothing but ocean. Nothing! And the colour of the water is completely different to the little beach fronts that we see. It’s the deepest, deepest, darkest blue. Yeah, I’ve never seen anything like that. And I’ve never wished for a little piece of land so bad.

Hannah Stitfall:
That you’ve been a supporter of the Global Oceans Treaty.

Amanda Dupont:
Yes, ma’am.

Hannah Stitfall:
Since it began, how did you feel when it was finally adopted?

Amanda Dupont:
I’m very hard on myself. So happy, yes, but it’s not good enough. There’s still too much ocean not protected. I’m very happy that we got somewhere which means our voices are heard. But I wish for Africans to to unite. And it is an issue that’s important to us. And just like as an African to tell them like guys, it does matter. And we are the only, we are the lowest numbers that have signed for this treaty. And that breaks my heart. Africa is so vast in numbers, we are powerful. You know, we always look to you guys. Because you’re like cool, and your passion is amazing. And your government is crazy. But we have the power of the people. You know, and I just wished for Africans to unite because then we’ll be able to protect even more of the oceans. And then that’s power. You know?

Hannah Stitfall:
So would you go back out on an expedition with Greenpeace?

Amanda Dupont:
Expedition yes! To the sea, no! If I haven’t approved a Greenpeace that I’m dedicated to them. But I was actually chatting to them now and I would love to do my next expedition may be something different. And I think if I show Africans a different side, and I showed them people who are no longer getting able to have a food source. I loved that expedition. And it was an amazing thing, but I’m not gonna lie, guys. It was extremely hard. Like, when I go to heaven someday God is gonna give me a gold star for that.

Hannah Stitfall:
Oh listen, Amanda, thank you so so much. It’s been brilliant talking to you.

Amanda Dupont:
You’re amazing!

Hannah Stitfall:
Oh, you are! Keep up the brilliant work, darling. Honestly, you’re a superstar. You get a gold star from me. Okay? Thank you.

Amanda Dupont:
And you get a gold star from me. Everybody’s getting one!

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you so much. Thank you.

(waves crashing)

Hannah Stitfall:
Lucy, what is your favourite seamount?

Lucy Woodall:
Oh, I don’t know!

Hannah Stitfall:
Sorry. You can say top two if you can’t pick one.

Lucy Woodall:
I think Carter seamount it’s down in the southwest Indian Ocean. I think it’s going to be my favourite because it’s sort of where I started. I saw for the first time a crinoids swimming. They have got five arms. Let’s see. Imagine a starfish with sort of the arms themselves are quite feathery. Feather Stars is their common name crinoids, but I’ve never seen one swimming. And I’m just going to do a mime to now – sorry listeners so you can’t hear me but their arms were doing this funny thing.

Hannah Stitfall:
She’s waving her arms about in the air. Like she’s doing some sort of dance but but flowey movement like that. Yeah.

Lucy Woodall:
Exactly. Sort of one up and one down. Yeah. Well, anyway, go and have a look. Go and search for it online. Go look for swimming crinoids because honestly, I was like, this is out of alien. Like I had never seen anything move that way before. And it was only a little thing and it was only for a couple of seconds. You know what that definitely stayed with me.

Hannah Stitfall:
So we need to look up crinoids swimming.

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, exactly.

Hannah Stitfall:
It’s like out of alien.

Lucy Woodall:
There you go.

Hannah Stitfall:
Okay. So, these seamounts… Would you say they are vulnerable to human activity?

Lucy Woodall:
Yeah, so seamounts are vulnerable and are classified as vulnerable marine ecosystems. And what does that really mean? It means that lots of things that live on the seamount are long lived. But these organisms are also easily damaged and removed. There is relatively low reproductive outputs. So it’s not like there’s new propagules coming through every month. This just happens infrequently. And this means that there’s low resilience. And remember, it’s not just the organisms themselves, the coral or the sponge. It’s all the other animals that are associated with that. All the little critters but also the fish, and of course, like our whales, the big megafauna.

And what are some of these activities? so things like bottom trawling, if that gets all the way down to the seabed that can scrape up that habitat, and that’s gone. It’s gone forever. Very effective at removing things from the seabed. We also now are looking at a potential new industry in the deep sea and that’s deep sea mining.

This is really important to consider for seamounts. There’s ongoing negotiations happening in Jamaica at the International Seabed Authority. There is now growing backing of a moratorium across states.

But let me just explain to you why this is particularly important for seamounts. Seamounts have got a black crust that’s built up over many, many, many decades. And this black crust is attached hard to the rock.

And it is rich in cobalt. And that cobalt crust is one of the things that mining industry might want to remove.

Hannah Stitfall:
Gotcha.

Lucy Woodall:
So actually means physically scraping that off. Before you get to the rocks, of course, you’re absolutely going to be scraping off all of the biology, but also the hard substrate that the biology was living on. So it isn’t something that’s removed from our lives. Because of course, mining happens because of the things that we purchase, and we use as humans.

Hannah Stitfall:
And are there any rules at the moment when it comes to deep sea mining?

Lucy Woodall:
No. So that’s currently what is under negotiations. But it’s important for that framework to be set down. Because, you know, we can look at something today and think it’s a healthy system. I mean, arguably, you can just go into, let’s say, our oak forests around here in the UK, we can get Oh, that’s nice. I can hear lots of birds.

But I’m sure if we spoke to our great grandparents, if they’d walked through the same words. They’d be like, Oh, my goodness, there’s nothing around today. Yeah, right? We have shifting baselines, we’re never going to know everything. We’ve just got to try and know enough to ensure that we leave the planet in a better place for the future. And we only do that by asking questions, to be curious. I’m curious about the deep sea. I’m also curious about my back garden, and about the river at the end of my road and about the forest. And I think that’s actually a really important message. You know, today we’ve been talking about something that’s so remote and such a tiny, tiny proportion of people are ever going to go see those seamounts but we all have something around us that might be our park, it might be a window boxes, right? Even. It might be just looking out to the sky, we can all be curious about our planet, and I think doesn’t matter what you’re curious about. But that curiosity is important because that means that you’ll start to have a connection. And once we’re connected to our planet, then we care about it. And we can start making decisions and support others to make decisions that mean that we will all be more healthy and more successful.

Hannah Stitfall:
And when will be the next time you get to go and see a seamount.

Lucy Woodall:
Well, I don’t know actually. Soon, I hope. So I imagine it’ll be in the Indian Ocean. I am in a few weeks off to South Africa to do a little bit of work in their coastal areas, not a seamount, but I will be looking at some underwater imagery. And and that’s pretty exciting.

Hannah Stitfall:
So do you think you’re gonna find your seahorse species in a seamount?

Lucy Woodall:
Well, I’ll tell you what, if I do, then you’ll be the first to know. And then maybe we can, we can figure out what we need to call it.

Hannah Stitfall:
I’d love that. Thank you so much for coming back on. Thank you.

Lucy Woodall:
No problem is my pleasure.

Hannah Stitfall:
Don’t forget to follow the pod wherever you’re listening to this and come join us on the socials. We’re @oceanspod. Next week, the wild west of the high seas, pirates, illegal fishing, smuggling… How do you even begin to govern something as vast as the ocean?

But before that, I’ve got an update for you from those Galapagus expeditioners, the ones we met earlier in this series, they’ve sent me an update on how it’s all going out there. So here it is:

Usnea Granger:
So in summary, where we were most recently is in the high sea mounds, an area completely unregulated for fishing. So checking out sea mounds in the area and trying to get a sense of what species are using this area as a pathway, a biological corridor. I have the privilege of being here with Paola Sangolqui, one of the amazing scientists on this voyage.

Paola Sangolqui:
Hi Usnea, thank you. My name is Paola Sangolqui. I am from the Galapagos Island. I have the honour to go this beautiful, incredible islands my home. Right now we are in the Galapagos marine reserve. We are part of a marine corridor that connects for example, the Galapagos marine reserve with Caicos island in Costa Rica. There’s evidence that suggest that these sea mounts are connecting these two areas, but also, this is what sets the migratory route for some critically endangered species like whale sharks, for example, hammerhead sharks as well. Some whales, also green sea turtles, leatherback turtles critically endangered as well.

Usnea Granger:
So exciting to be here with you Paula collecting this new data for the very first time and then what have we seen so far? There’s been some very exciting video footage I’m sure people want to hear about.

Paola Sangolqui:
Sure so for example, for the first part of this expedition we were able to see some blue sharks in front of our camera very curious came up really close.

And then we also got some images of pelagic rays. Finding them here show us once again, the importance of this ecosystems like seamounts because right now we are on top of a seamount. So with this information we can link these ecosystems and the need of this type of environment for species like sharks because right now we are like in completely open waters, open waters but still we can find these type of species that are swimming on top of the, of this seamounts.

Hannah Stitfall:
Thank you so much for listening, and see you next week.

PETITION: Ban bottom trawling on seamounts

Join the call to demand that the NZ Govt bans bottom trawling on seamounts and similar deep sea features, and stop issuing permits for bottom trawling in international waters.

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This episode was brought to you by Greenpeace and Crowd Network. It’s hosted by me, wildlife filmmaker and broadcaster Hannah Stitfall. It is produced by Anastasia Auffenberg, and our executive producer Steve Jones. The music we use is from our partners BMG Production Music. Archive courtesy of Greenpeace. The team at crowd network is Catalina Nogueira, Archie Built Cliff, George Sampson and Robert Wallace. The team at Greenpeace is James Hansen, Flora Hevesi, Alex Yallop, Janae Mayer and Alice Lloyd Hunter. Thanks for listening and see you next week. Transcribed by https://otter.ai