They Found New Species in One of the World's Most Protected Seas

[00:00:01]Palau is a special place because [music] it's home.

[00:00:05]Everything we do, we must be able to protect it for the future.

[00:00:09]>> The biosphere is changing very [music] rapidly because of what humans are doing to it.

[00:00:13]And a lot of things are disappearing.

[00:00:15]So, the window to really understand what's out there is now. And we need to do it.

[00:00:21]>> In the heart of the Pacific Ocean, there is an island nation surrounded by one of the [music] richest marine ecosystems on Earth, Palau.

[00:00:30]With approximately 340 islands, Palau sits isolated by hundreds of kilometers of open ocean.

[00:00:37]Its shallow reefs have been studied for decades, but its deeper waters remain mostly unknown, until now.

[00:00:45]Ocean Explorer has brought together a team of scientists from Palau and around the world.

[00:00:51]They're here to study what lives beneath the surface and how these ecosystems are connected from the shallows to the deep.

[00:00:59]Out here, understanding the ocean and its biodiversity means working across different depths, using different tools, and seeing the ecosystem from multiple perspectives.

[00:01:10]>> Having [music] the three teams, so one dealing with the biological diversity at sea, one dealing with megafauna [music] and their distribution, and one dealing with eDNA, it's a fantastic opportunity for cross-team research.

[00:01:23]>> One of those approaches is a bioblitz, a large-scale biodiversity survey designed to document as much life as possible.

[00:01:31]>> It's a kind of all hands-on deck approach to documenting diversity in a particular space and time.

[00:01:37]>> On this expedition, that means using ROVs and submersibles to explore deep-sea habitats that have never been surveyed before.

[00:01:47]>> This expedition is the first attempt to tackle that large gap in our knowledge.

[00:01:52][music] It's a pretty wide range of depth zones, and we know that as environmental conditions change, you have different organisms distributed on the seafloor.

[00:02:00]So, we are having a much better insight [music] in the life history of these organisms.

[00:02:06]>> When you work in the deep sea, novelty is the rule, and knowing something is the exception. How much novelty you get depends on how you sample, and sampling the environment is often how you get the most unusual things.

[00:02:20]The most amazing thing that I'm most excited about was we were in [music] this one area, and there were these fuzzy things growing on the bottom that look kind of like algae, and it turned out to be an entirely new kind of comb jelly, and it breaks many rules in in the comb jelly world. Once the samples are taken, they are archived in collections that hold specimens in perpetuity for humanity.

[00:02:45]>> Another approach tracks how larger animals move through and between different habitats. Baited remote underwater video systems, known as BRUVs, left at sea for hours at a time, these camera rigs use bait to attract curious animals, giving scientists a clearer picture of what's in the water.

[00:03:03]>> We really do want to get an idea of where things are present and how they use these different habitats.

[00:03:09]>> The BRUVs are deployed at multiple depths.

[00:03:11]>> At about 100 m deep, even 1,500 m deep, and right up at the surface at about 10 m deep.

[00:03:18]One unexpected thing was we had a false catshark come and pick up some of the crabs and swim away with them. The team was pretty blown away when we SAW THAT FOOTAGE.

[00:03:28]>> [laughter] >> IN ADDITION TO THESE VARIOUS CAMERAS, we're also using OceanX's full helicopter to do aerial surveys. We've seen several different types of schools of tuna, dwarf sperm whales, we've seen short-fin pilot whales. We'll let the animals tell us what's the habitats that you use, and maybe those are good candidates for protection.

[00:03:50]>> But much of what moves through these waters may never be seen, remaining just beyond the reach of even the most advanced cameras.

[00:03:59]Yet every organism that moves through the ocean leaves traces behind in the form of environmental DNA or eDNA.

[00:04:07]By analyzing samples from the water column, scientists can identify which organisms are present.

[00:04:13]>> eDNA gives you that ability to get an idea of what's there before it's actually seen. It can give you a really good story of what was in there.

[00:04:23]>> At times, these approaches come together, opening up new ways to sample environmental DNA.

[00:04:30]>> We have this little torpedo and it's essentially designed to be towed off the ship and we thought it would be a great idea to see if the megafauna team and the helicopter pilot would be okay dropping that down collecting some samples of things that they saw.

[00:04:46]Going to be able to compare with some of the results that we're getting from our filtering. It's really cool because we've never had the opportunity to do this.

[00:04:55]>> As the expedition continues, each survey reveals more of Palau's unique marine biodiversity.

[00:05:01]From whales and dolphins to the smallest life in the reefs, every species can now be placed in context.

[00:05:08]>> We can now say this organism prefers to live in these environmental conditions and is associated to other organisms.

[00:05:14]So, it's a much more ecological approach.

[00:05:18]>> The reality is that the ocean is a connected system that goes extremely deep and if one part is not working, there's a chance that the other parts don't work as well.

[00:05:27]>> Palau understood [music] the urgency of safeguarding the entire ecosystem before most other countries did. [music] In 2020, it set aside 80% of its exclusive economic [music] zone as a fully protected marine sanctuary, one of the largest marine protected areas in the world.

[00:05:45]>> Palau is really a pioneer in in protecting its oceans and I think the reefs look and and will fare better because of it.

[00:05:53]>> What we're hoping to provide with this expedition is another layer of fundamental information.

[00:05:59]>> Being a Palauan doing this work gives me so much pride [music] that I can give back and contribute to this effort of conservation and protection [music] for our future generation.