Extreme Closeup of Coral Polyps - 2014 (Remastered!)
Celebrating our 15th anniversary, we're looking back at memorable moments from expeditions in the archive. In this 2014 video from the Noroit Seamount, ROV Hercules grabs an extreme closeup of an Iridogorgia coral and shrimp associate. Coral is a colonial organism, so each polyp is actually an individual life form. Share in the excitement of ocean exploration while learning about polyp morphology in this fun flashback to the NA052 expedition to Anegada Passage (connecting the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean) and the British Virgin Islands' Seamounts.
Anegada Passage & the British Virgin Islands' Seamounts
Within the Caribbean region, numerous unexplored seamounts punctuate the seafloor holding records of geologic, biologic and oceanographic processes over different time-scales. Seamounts are topographically and oceanographically complex with environmental characteristics that vary greatly and have often been suggested to be biodiversity hotspots, however, many of these hypotheses are only beginning to be explored in detail.
