Posted on 08/11/2018 11:53:55 AM PDT by BenLurkin
The scientist mapped the newly discovered canyon on board Irish ship, RV Celtic Explorer, over two weeks.
Led by Dr Aaron Lim of UCCs School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences (BEES), used the Marine Institutes Holland 1 Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) the team believes the new discovery will aid in understanding more about the transportation of carbon to the deep ocean.
Lim told BreakingNews.ie This is a vast submarine canyon system, with near-vertical 700m cliff in places and going as deep as 3000m.
He added, So far from land, this canyon is a natural laboratory from which we feel the pulse of the changing Atlantic.
The Porcupine Bank Canyon is full of cold-water corals forming reefs and mounds. These create a rim on the lip of the canyon which is 30 meters tall and 17.3 miles long. The reefs eventually break off and slide down the canyon. They then form an accumulation of coral rubble deeper within the canyon. With the use of equipment, the scientists were able to discover a significant build-up of coral debris.
(Excerpt) Read more at irishcentral.com ...
They will literally let them suspend across if they can. Then someones net snags it.
Very cool. Must have been quite the sight to see when it was all dry with a river digging a canyon through it.
I was fortunate enough to visit Ireland for my sister’s wedding around 1998. After that Daughter and I spent 2 weeks in a rental car, having misadventures of all kinds all over Ireland, but oh! The Ring of Dingle....
Funny name, but it is the most beautiful place I have ever seen with my own eyes. Travel books vaunt the Ring of Kerry, which we also drove, but hands down, Dingle is breathtaking.
So much so, that my everlasting dream is to have a Pub/ Tea Shop/ Petting Zoo on the West coast of Ireland.
Sweet Jesus... that was the last, real, great time I ever had .... Glad I had it.
Damage from NYC/NJ sewage over the centuries.
A research expedition to a huge underwater canyon off the Irish coast has shed light on a hidden process that sucks the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) out of the atmosphere.
Researchers led by a team from the University College Cork (UCC) took an underwater research drone by boat out to Porcupine Bank Canyon a massive, cliff-walled underwater trench where Irelands continental shelf ends to build a detailed map of its boundaries and interior. Along the way, the researchers reported in a statement, they noted a process at the edge of the canyon that pulls CO2 from the atmosphere and buries it deep under the sea.
All around the rim of the canyon live cold-water corals, which thrive on dead plankton raining down from the ocean surface. Those tiny, surface-dwelling plankton build their bodies out of carbon extracted from CO2 in the air.
Then, when they die, the coral on the seafloor consume them and build their bodies out of the same carbon. Over time, as the coral die and the cliff faces shift and crumble, which sends the coral falling deep into the canyon. There, the carbon pretty much stays put for long periods.
Theres evidence that a lot of carbon is moving this way; the researchers said they found significant dead coral buildup at the canyon bottom.
This process doesnt move nearly enough carbon dioxide to prevent climate change, the researchers said. But it does shed light on yet another mechanism that keeps the planets CO2 levels regulated when human industry doesnt interfere.
Increasing CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere are causing our extreme weather, Andy Wheeler, a UCC geoscientist and one of the researchers on the expedition, said in the statement. Oceans absorb this CO2 and canyons are a rapid route for pumping it into the deep ocean where it is safely stored away.
The mapping expedition covered an area about the size of Chicago and revealed places where the canyon has moved and shifted significantly in the past.
We took cores with the ROV, and the sediments reveal that although the canyon is quiet now, periodically it is a violent place where the seabed gets ripped up and eroded, Wheeler said.
The expedition will return to shore today (Aug. 10).
I do believe the greatest carbon absorbsion occurs from the natural process that plants use and then exhale oxygen.
This CO2 thing us such a hoax. Our air that we breathe is 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and the 1% left contains all of the other gasses, including CO2.
CO2 is .0345% of that 1%. Translated into English, it is 345 ten-thousands of a percent.
Chuck Berry wants to know if anyone found his Dingle Ling down there?
Wow. That can be a mile across or more. That’s a lot of unsupported weight on the cable.
Something like this they would find an alternate route
Must be full of Dingle-berries... >.<
We have a trip planned for there June 2019. I can’t wait!
Thank you! Daughter and I have a trip planned there for June 2019. Won a silent auction for the trip at a Vet Benefit
I’ll dig out my pics :) It was gloriously wild. I loved the southwest part of Ireland more than any other.
...large waves caused by distant storms off the coast of South Africa... three to four thousand years ago... broke coral rubble off the reef and transported it onto reef platforms creating the foundations for the reef islands. At the time, sea levels were up to 0.5 metres higher than they are today...
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