Montreal – Below seal and Beluga that dive from the saguine fioids of Quebec, sea level mud are small creatures that scientists believe that plays an important role in reducing the effects of climate change.
Earlier this month, scientists of the United Kingdom and Universit Laval spent several days on bumpy water of the ford, in a search to track life in mud below 200 meters below.
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow of Exeter University Dr. Adam Porter said that on sea level, they could look like “impermeable blue” for those on sea level.
He said, “I think the mud is even more impermeable because you get down to the bottom, you look at the sea floor, it can often feel that much is not going on,” he said in a video interview. “But this is the whole world of life under the mud, and it is playing a really important role in keeping the planet healthy.”
Research is part of the convex sequence survey, a partnership explains how the sea level controls the climate through the sequence of carbon, and the role is that the small animals in the soil play in keeping the planet healthy, the porter said.
Anotherly, he said that there is another title in the study: “Mud is trying to make sexy.”
Rebecca Hovman, a PhD student of Universate Laval, said that collecting about 60 sea level samples was complicated by the tides, waves and current of the Sagun Foord.
He said in an interview, “You must really have to take a part of the floor from the ground, and given that Sagune is 200 meters deep, it is quite achievement.” By boat, scientists used that he is described for samples described as a “large paw”, which were transferred to the aquariums to use scientists to study and use.
“It is very dirty, very dirty, but it is also a good challenge and really quite fun,” he said.
When he was drawn from the bottom of the ford, samples were transferred to the aquarium in Chicoutimi, Que, for study. Porter stated that researchers put fluorescent sand over the mud to track animal buried movements, some of which are too small to spot with naked eyes.
What came out of the mud was a small world, which was with life. “You can get creatures like insects, brittle stars, bifurcated-sole-sole,” Homan said. “So the load of different types of life remains within the mud, which is interesting because you look at the mud and you don’t think anything is actually going on.”
While the organisms are small, they compared them to the “small ocean gardeners” who help keep the sea level healthy and eventually support the entire marine ecosystem. “The way they move the sediment, it changes the entire structure of the ecosystem,” he said. “And it can support the ecosystem by changing the flow of nutrients – it oxygen the sediment.”
He said that they also help storing carbon in sea level by eating or trapping the organic matter falling from above – a role that researchers say that it may be important to reduce the effects of climate change.
Porter described the oceans and ocean floors as “one of the largest carbon stores on Earth”, holding more carbon than the rainfores.
He said that the concern is that when sea level is disturbed through activities such as trawling, dredging or mining, “We are potentially releasing carbon and undo any effort that we are to reduce and reduce our carbon emissions on the ground.”
He hopes that the five -year convex skeep survey, which is taking place in countries around the world, will help researchers to identify sea level areas that are particularly important for carbon sequences, and ultimately help the decision makers explain to protect them.
Many countries, including Canada, have signed a pledge to protect 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans by 2030. It also includes sea level, said Porter said.
