Seamount research extended
CenSeam, the global Census of Marine Life programme on seamounts, has received funding to expand its field research.
CenSeam’s aim is to integrate and expand seamount research around the world. Research is focused on evaluating factors driving community composition and biodiversity on seamounts, and determining the impacts of human activities on seamount community structure and function.
Over the past few years, CenSeam has supported many varied research activities according to NIWA’s Dr Malcolm Clark, who leads a three-strong CenSeam team in Wellington. From now until 2009, research will focus on collection and analysis of biodiversity data from seamounts around the world. CenSeam is associated with over 30 scheduled or proposed seamount surveys in that time. An important aspect of CenSeam’s work is to maintain and further develop the publicdomain database, ‘Seamounts Online’, which will be used in 2009–10 for a major synthesis of CenSeam data.
CenSeam is coordinated by a steering committee with representatives from 11 countries. Its secretariat is jointly hosted by NIWA and the University of California, San Diego.