The seamounts Ses Olives and Ausias March, located to the east of the Pitiusas Islands, and Mount Emile Baudot, also located to the east of these islands and south of Mallorca, have been explored.
The second research campaign of the LIFE IP INTEMARES project in the Mallorca Channel has come to an end, an expedition carried out over 21 days by scientists from the Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO), aboard the oceanographic vessel Ángeles Alvariño.
In this campaign, which began on 10 October, the Ses Olives and Ausias March seamounts, located to the east of the Pitiusas Islands, and Mount Emile Baudot, also located to the east of these islands and south of Mallorca, have been explored.
These ecosystems already revealed in the first campaign a great wealth of species and habitats of community interest. From maërl (calcareous red algae) bottoms, some of the deepest in the western Mediterranean, located on the tops of the mountains, where there are also gorgonians and a great diversity of sponges, to fields of fluid leaks in their environment, characterised by depressions and known as pockmarks.
On this occasion, those areas of the study areas not explored in the first expedition have been examined, including the tops of the three mountains, as well as their slopes and the bathyal bottoms that surround them. This campaign will improve the scientific knowledge of the seabed of the Mallorca Channel, for its possible declaration as a Site of Community Importance (SCI) within the Natura 2000 Network and thus ensure its protection.
A multidisciplinary team has participated in the expedition, made up of scientists from the Benthic Ecosystems and Demersal Resources group and the Marine Geosciences group of the Oceanographic Centers of the IEO of the Balearic Islands and Malaga, respectively.
The campaign, which has increased the surface of the seabed mapped on the peaks, slopes and surroundings of these mountains by 1,870km2 , has been able to inventory up to 420 species, mainly echinoderms (ofiuras, urchins, holothurias and starfish), decapod crustaceans (shrimps and crabs), molluscs (sea snails, bivalves and cephalopods) and fish.
To obtain this information, the researchers have taken samples and images of the seabed and its flora and fauna along 1,156 kilometres, between 100 and more than 1,000 metres deep. Also of sediments, rocks and water at 191 stations, adding up to more than 14 hours of video recordings.
These data provide a first approach to the information collected, which will be exhaustively analysed in the laboratory by researchers in the coming months, and which will determine aspects such as the definitive identification of species such as sponges.
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