Seigo­nie Mo­hammed

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

seigo­nie.mo­hammed@guardian.co.tt

Sit­ting along­side the Tem­blado­ra dock cur­rent­ly, wait­ing for de­par­ture, is the R/V Falkor (too). In­side, an­tic­i­pa­tion is build­ing for an ex­pe­di­tion that promis­es to re­veal one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s great­est mys­ter­ies, the deep sea be­neath its own wa­ters.

Guardian Me­dia was in­vit­ed aboard for a brief tour be­fore the month-long sci­en­tif­ic mis­sion gets un­der­way. Led by a team of T&T re­searchers aboard one of the world’s most ad­vanced ocean re­search ves­sels, the ex­pe­di­tion will soon trav­el across To­ba­go’s east coast, doc­u­ment­ing ecosys­tems and ma­rine life that have nev­er been ob­served.

For many read­ers, the deep ocean may seem re­mote, but it makes up the largest part of the coun­try’s ma­rine ter­ri­to­ry.

“There is so much that Trin­bag­o­ni­ans do not know about this amaz­ing ecosys­tem that is the ma­jor­i­ty of our coun­try,” Chief Sci­en­tist Dr Di­va Amon told Guardian Me­dia dur­ing the tour.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go is 70 per cent deep sea and ac­tu­al­ly more than 93 per cent of that is be­low scu­ba depths and that means we do not ... we have not been able to ac­cess that from a sci­en­tif­ic per­spec­tive. There is so much left to dis­cov­er.”

The jour­ney will be­gin in wa­ters as shal­low as 60 me­tres be­fore de­scend­ing thou­sands of me­tres in­to com­plete dark­ness, where im­mense pres­sure and near-freez­ing tem­per­a­tures cre­ate an en­vi­ron­ment un­like any­where on land.

Yet, sci­en­tists say it is any­thing but life­less.

“One of the biggest mis­con­cep­tions about the deep sea, I think, is that it is emp­ty, life­less,” Dr Amon said.

“That could not be fur­ther from the truth. This is an in­cred­i­ble place, home to hun­dreds of thou­sands of species glob­al­ly. It is crit­i­cal for the func­tion­ing of the plan­et in that it sup­ports fish­eries, it reg­u­lates our cli­mate, it is home to so many dif­fer­ent species that we use in some way and there is just so much that we still don’t know.”

Co-prin­ci­pal In­ves­ti­ga­tor, Dr La Daana Kan­hai, of The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, says those hid­den ecosys­tems stretch far be­yond the coast­line most peo­ple know.

“As you move east of Trinidad and as you move east of To­ba­go, even north of To­ba­go, that depth de­scends to in ex­cess of 3,000 me­tres, and the thing is life pro­lif­er­ates through­out the wa­ter col­umn in all en­vi­ron­men­tal com­part­ments,” she said.

“I think that’s some­thing that maybe many Trin­bag­o­ni­ans are un­aware of, that in every drop of wa­ter there’s life.”

The ves­sel’s re­mote­ly op­er­at­ed ve­hi­cle, SuB­as­t­ian, will de­scend to depths of up to 4,500 me­tres, trans­mit­ting live high-de­f­i­n­i­tion im­ages from the seabed while col­lect­ing sam­ples and map­ping the ocean floor. Every dive will al­so be livestreamed, al­low­ing mem­bers of the pub­lic to watch dis­cov­er­ies un­fold in re­al time.

While the ex­pe­di­tion is ex­pect­ed to un­cov­er new species and pre­vi­ous­ly un­seen habi­tats, the re­search al­so has prac­ti­cal im­por­tance. Sci­en­tists hope the in­for­ma­tion gath­ered will guide fu­ture de­ci­sions about man­ag­ing off­shore ecosys­tems and iden­ti­fy­ing ar­eas that de­serve pro­tec­tion.

“We are ex­plor­ing so that we can bet­ter stew­ard,” Amon said.

“By gath­er­ing the sci­en­tif­ic da­ta, by an­swer­ing these sci­en­tif­ic ques­tions that no­body has an­swered be­fore, we can then use that to in­form the de­ci­sions that we are mak­ing about how we use these parts of the plan­et.”

That knowl­edge is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant as cli­mate change, pol­lu­tion and oth­er hu­man ac­tiv­i­ties re­shape the oceans. Sci­en­tists say the deep sea plays a vi­tal role in reg­u­lat­ing the Earth’s cli­mate, stor­ing car­bon and sup­port­ing fish­eries that coastal com­mu­ni­ties de­pend up­on.

“We know our plan­et is chang­ing, and the deep sea is ab­solute­ly not im­mune from that,” Amon said.

“Pol­lu­tion, cli­mate change, there may be im­pacts from oil and gas ex­trac­tion and much, much more, so this is re­al­ly a place that is very frag­ile, and we need to do all that we can to learn as much as we can about it.”

For Amon, how­ev­er, the voy­age car­ries a mean­ing that ex­tends be­yond sci­ence.

Years ago, she sailed from Port-of-Spain as a young re­searcher, join­ing a British-led deep-sea ex­pe­di­tion. This time, she re­turns to the same wa­ters lead­ing a pre­dom­i­nant­ly T&T sci­en­tif­ic team.

“Here we are 16 years lat­er. In­stead of there be­ing a British team on board with one sci­en­tist, we have a pri­mar­i­ly Trinida­di­an, Trin­bag­on­ian team on board and we are lead­ing the sci­ence and now, I am in a lead­er­ship po­si­tion,” she said.

“It re­al­ly feels very, very full cir­cle, and I hope this will be a dream come true and a very spe­cial mo­ment.”

By the time the Falkor (too) re­turns on Ju­ly 28, there­fore, the coun­try’s deep­est wa­ters may no longer be its great­est mys­tery.