During an expedition that took place between January 8 and February 11 in 2024, a team of researchers aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor discovered a wealth of scientific wonders off the coast of Chile. The expedition, named “Seamounts of the Southeast Pacific,” focused on exploring underwater mountains or seamounts in three main areas: the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges, the Juan Fernández, and Nazca-Desventuradas marine parks.
The researchers mapped around 20,400 square miles (52,800 square kilometers) of the ocean and discovered four previously unknown solitary seamounts. The biggest of these, named Solito, towers 11,581 feet (3,530 meters) above the seafloor, making it more than four times taller than the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa, which stands at 2,716 feet (828 m) tall.
The team of scientists also used an underwater robot to explore the submerged slopes of 10 seamounts across the study range. This revealed more than 100 species, including corals, sponges, sea urchins, mollusks, and crustaceans, that the researchers believe are new to science. The underwater landscape is also home to some deep-sea weirdos such as intricate sponges, spiraling corals, a beady-eye lobster, a bizarre stack of oblong sea urchins, and a bright red “sea toad” with hands for fins.
The expedition has uncovered a treasure trove of scientific wonders, including more than 100 previously unknown marine species and a handful of never-before-seen underwater mountains. The incredible photos and video footage of the underwater landscape taken during the expedition showcase the marvels of the deep sea.
“We far exceeded our hopes on this expedition,” Javier Sellanes, a marine biologist at the Catholic University of the North, in Chile, and lead scientist on the expedition, said in a statement emailed to Live Science. “You always expect to find new species in these remote and poorly explored areas, but the amount we found, especially for some groups like sponges, is mind-blowing.”
The researchers took samples of the creatures and will begin studying each one to determine whether it is a new species.
“Full species identification can take many years,” Jyotika Virmani, SOI’s executive director, said in the statement. And the “incredible number of samples” could make this process even longer, she added.
The researchers found that most of the species found in the southeast Pacific live in habitats that are highly vulnerable to damage caused by trawling and deep-sea mining, such as cold-water corals and sponge gardens. The newly discovered species in the Juan Fernández and Nazca-Desventuradas parks are protected by the law from these threats. However, the seamounts located along the Nazca and Salas y Gómez ridges are currently not protected.
This research trip is the latest in a series of expeditions conducted by SOI that have mapped seamounts in the southeast Pacific in recent years. The institute previously mapped four other massive seamounts during an expedition off the coast of Chile and Peru, as well as another solitary peak off the coast of Guatemala last year. Each of these five peaks was at least twice as tall as the Burj Khalifa.
It is crucial to find and study these towering “biological hotspots” because they can “advance our knowledge of life on Earth,” as Virmani previously said after the discovery of the seamounts in Chile and Peru.