Diving into the Coral Cliffs of Barkley Canyon
Barkley Canyon, off the coast of southern Vancouver Island, is home to stunning deep sea coral cliffs. These cold water coral communities are a hotspot of biodiversity. Here, there is a high abundance of black corals, sponges, and anemones, as well as various fish, sea stars, crustaceans, and jellies. E/V Nautilus explored the coral cliffs of Barkley, taking benthic surveys (observations of inhabitants on the seafloor), in partnership with Ocean Networks Canada.
Contributed by Science Communication Fellow Kimberly Hermans with the assistance of Meagan Putts.
(Identifications are preliminary and may change with further examination by experts)
Ocean Networks Canada Maintenance and Exploration
For this expedition, we take a trip north to provide support to Ocean Networks Canada’s (ONC) wired seafloor observatory off the west coast of British Columbia where deployed technologies gather thousands of observations about dynamics across an entire tectonic plate.
