In January and February 2015, promoted by the FAO, an international oceanographic campaign was carried out in the seamounts of the south-eastern Atlantic with the aim of locating vulnerable marine ecosystems for their protection. The teachers and researchers from the University of Vigo Fran Ramil and Marta Gil were part of the group and international experts in taxonomy who took part in the campaign, taking care, on board the oceanographic vessel in charge of taking samples, of the first provisional assessments of their diversity. With the aim of reviewing these preliminary identifications, as well as the separation and study of some samples that could not be processed on board due to lack of time, a workshop has just ended in Cape Town (South Africa), organised by Ramil, on behalf of the FAO, in which, in addition to the representation of the University of Vigo, which participates in the EcoAfrik project, made up of Ramil himself, Marta Gil and Susana Soto, experts from Norway, South Africa and Angola participated.
“The assessment is very positive because thanks to the group of experts that we met at the University of Cape Town, we were able to study the most important groups that were collected during the campaign and obtain a more complete vision of the biodiversity in the studied area. The involvement of the participants in the review and identification of the samples was total, the work was done at a high level and, even, once the workshop was over, we reached the commitment to continue working in a coordinated manner from the Bergen University Museum, the University of Vienna and the University of Vigo, to finish the work”, explains Fran Ramil, from the South African city.
A first identification that would indicate a higher diversity than expected
In addition to practically completing the part related to the review of the preliminary identifications that Ramil and Gil had made on board during the campaign, the workshop also addressed the separation and study of some samples collected mostly from the Vemam seamount, which is located 450 nautical miles from the coast and which, from a depth of 4500 meters, reaches less than 40 meters deep. “In this case, although we were not able to complete the identifications, this first approximation seems to indicate that we are facing a higher diversity than we thought and that very interesting results will be achieved once we finish the work”, explains Ramil, who points out that it is precisely this part that they plan to develop in a coordinated manner in the coming months.
Regarding the next objectives of the EcoAfrik group, led by Ana Ramos, the researcher from the University of Vigo points out that he hopes that the publication of the results obtained in these last years of work will serve as a basis for the countries in the area to develop their programs for protecting the marine environment, the final objective of the project. “In the future, we plan to continue studying the deep-water coral reef of Mauritania, in this case in collaboration with Dr. Feiwald’s group, from the Senkenberg am Meer Wilhelmshaven Institute in Germany, and also continue collaborating in the study of benthic invertebrates in the field of FAO oceanographic campaigns on the western coasts of Africa,” Ramil details.
Source: duvi
