MBARI Deep-Sea Database

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Deep-Sea Guide

The public can now use the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s research database of deep-sea life. To use it, visitdsg.mbari.org/dsg/home.

Explore the deep sea with a mouse click

MOSS LANDING >> Now, you can explore the deep sea without leaving your chair.

The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute recently made public its wealth of research about deep-sea animals, geology and other scientific observations. Previously only available for internal use, the Deep-Sea Guide is a free online database that scientists and everyone else can explore.

“We hope that this is a tool that we can use to share with the public and collaborate with other researchers around the world and explore what we’ve seen and potentially identify new discoveries,” said Nancy Jacobsen Stout, the institute’s video laboratory supervisor, who managed the project and its team.





Part of institute’s mission is to share information and research tools freely with the scientific community.

Accessible with a click of a mouse are about 25,000 hours of video the institute has been collecting for 25 years with remotely operated vehicles sent underwater up and down the Eastern Pacific Ocean.

The research powerhouse records data on water depth, temperature, oxygen concentrations and characteristics about the deep-sea environment and creatures seemingly not of this world.

Here’s how the guide works. Experts can type into the search bar highly technical or super specific terms such as “Embassichthys bathybius” instead of “deep-sea sole.” But lay folk can simply search “fish” or “urchin.”





Then up will pop snippets of more than 5 million annotations in the database.

“Your results will come back with pictures, characteristics and references,” Stout said.

Founded in 1987, the institute is located in Moss Landing near where the Monterey Bay Canyon begins. It’s deeper than the Grand Canyon and reaches depths of 11,800 feet or more than 2 miles long.

The institute is home to top scientists studying the deep sea. A common saying is that more is known about the dark side of the moon than the dark depths of the ocean.





“The ultimate goal is to work toward establishing a biodiversity baseline,” Stout said, “basically figuring out what’s out there, how many of them there are, how they change over time and how their populations change over all. It’s a tool that helps asses ocean health.”
 
The "data products" link gives more information of sightings by region (defaults to global but the drop-down provides more specific local options.

Sadly, there don't appear to be deep water cuttlefish and there is nothing (yet) for nautilus.
 

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