Exploring pristine deep-sea walls to establish baselines for Good Environmental Status in the Azores
Informations
- Funding country
Portugal- Acronym
- DeepWalls
- Start date
- -
- End date
- -
- Budget
- 179,822 EUR
Fundings
| Name | Role | Start | End | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Açores OP 2020: Açores Operational Programme to 2020 | Grant | - | - | 179,822 EUR |
Abstract
Deep-sea vertical walls have rarely been surveyed due to technical challenges they pose to the operation of remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) from surface vessels. DeepWalls will take advantage of the collaboration with the Rebikoff-Niggeler Foundation (FRN) and the use of their submersible Lula1000 to (1) map and document the occurrence of Vulnerable Marine Ecosystems (VMEs) associated with deepsea vertical walls in the Azores and (2) to estimate baseline conditions in the context of Good Environmental Status of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MFSD) European Union. The project is composed by 3 Work-packages with the specific objectives of: 1) Build a database on archived video material on deepsea biological communities in the Azores (WP1); 2) Develop standard survey methodologies for the mapping of biological communities in vertical walls with the submersible Lula1000 that could be applied in current and future projects (WP2); 3) Characterize and map the distribution of megafaunal communities associated with vertical walls in terms of species composition, diversity, abundance and size structure based on and new submersible dives and existing video material from FRN exploratory dives (WP2); 4) Determine the state of communities in vertical walls by applying indicators of GES as developed for the deep-sea in general and the Azores in particular as part of the MSFD (WP3).