Extract from the teaser Telecamera W1

W1 Blueresearch cameras for the project of Dr. Marzia Bo Department of Earth, Environmental and Life Sciences – University of Genoa

The depths of the Mediterranean Sea hide innumerable treasures. For marine biologists these treasures are also represented by the supple branches of some corals, tall as small trees, with complex shapes and variously colored and able to form the so-called animal forests, dense aggregations similar to woods that thrive in the dark or dark areas of all the oceans of the world. These are colonial animal organisms, formed by thousands of small polyps, adapted to live in current and filter the water, that’s why they prefer rocky outcrops like dry offshore, canyons and submarine mountains, invested by important currents of depth!
These environments play a decisively important role as these dense forests attract other organisms, increasing the biodiversity of the seabed including fish species that find a shelter or a breeding area here.
In the last ten years numerous research campaigns have been carried out to identify these species, to describe their associations with other organisms, to study their geographic and bathymetric distribution and to assess their vulnerability to the effects of fishing.

To date we can say that we have a much deeper knowledge of the abundance of animal forests in the Italian seas, nevertheless there are still several aspects that remain unknown, given the difficulty of exploring deep or very distant areas and making long monitors, different from the simple point exploration.
These aspects concern the biology and ecology of these species, such as reproduction, growth, nutrition, fundamental knowledge to be acquired to evaluate the true functioning of these environments and the responses to any disturbance phenomena.

The deep shoals of Liguria offer an open-air laboratory to study the numerous animal forests that they host. It is the case of the forest of the so-called black coral Antipathella subpinnata of Bordighera, a coral that has only the color of the skeleton in black, but in appearance it is ethereal white. Here there is a rich density of colonies studied by the University of Genoa thanks to the use of ROV and technical underwater operators.

In the past few weeks this site has also seen the first use of a timed underwater camera, or lander, designed and built by BlueResearch, to study the fauna associated with the forest. The machine has produced over 16,000 photos in a month taking up, day and night, the submerged landscape and confirming the important role of the dense coral forest in creating a refuge for dozens of fish species that find here a comfortable bed for the night or a hunting area. New shots are planned for the near future, all aimed at revealing the mysteries that surround the rich animal forests of the Mediterranean.