The Oceana expedition on the Canary Islands,in colaboration with the Biodiversity Foundation has discovered twelve hitherto unknown species in the waters around the islands.
In a press release Oceana has said that they have found new sponges,white and black ball corals,new types of catfish and also other species about which little is known,such as deep water monkfish,scorpion fish,fan corals,lollipop sponges and flycatcher anemones.
This is the fifth annual expedition to explore the seamounts around the Canary Islands.A team of divers are filming at 40 metres down.There is also an underwater robot filming up to 500 metres down,transmitting the images to the ship above for identification.
Most of the Canary Island seabeds remain unexplored as the shelf is small and quickly drops to 3000 metres.In terms of marine ecology it makes it a difficult project.So far the team of Oceana Ranger has made about 40 dives.They have been diving off Lanzarote,Fuetaventura ,Gran Canaria ,Tenerife,La Gomera and la Palma.This month they will begin diving around El Hierro as well as continuing with the rest of the islands.
Another objective of the Oceana is to record and identify the different species of shark and rays around the islands.Their numbers have decreased rapidly recently.So far they have identified five different species of shark and five species of ray.
