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Deep Beauty and Diversity

Seamounts often support high biodiversity and abundance and attract commercial fishing, but we know little about them. The international research project CenSeam—a Global Census of Marine Life on Seamounts—is led partly by WHOI deep-sea biologist Tim Shank and brings scientists studying seamounts together to share information. CenSeam is one of more than seventeen research projects within the Census of Marine Life (CoML), a ten-year global program initiated by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation trying to answer the question, “What lives in the sea?” The final CoML report was released October 4, 2010. The “Life on the Seamonts” poster is available through the WHOI store. (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)