- Okay.
What to do, what to do.
- Chris is about to jump out of his seat if we
don't start looking around.
- He's vibrating back here.
- No, no, I'm fine.
I think it's going to continue for a while,
but I have to admit the size of these corals.
I've only seen at one other place,
and that was in the musician seamounts north of the
Hawaiian chain.
- It's pretty amazing.
- Yeah, It's extraordinary.
And also you might expect a complete transition from these
to bamboo corals.
If it's similar to the musicians as we progress along this
ridge, but maybe not.
- Good choice.
- Anyway, this is what I was hoping.
And maybe we're getting better at this game trying to find
these things, but think for now this,
just to let the viewers know this poses a problem as well.
And the problem is that there's not a whole lot of places to
set down the,
so we're going to have to find hopefully a clear area,
because this is so dense and these colonies are so
spectacular that we have to be extremely careful.
So what I would suggest is let's go ahead and sorta start a
transect, forget about rocks.
Cause I think this is impossible to collect a rock right now
until we find a clear area and just take a look and just,
just enjoy this amazing scene.
All right. So how many of these whip corals right now,
if you had to count that I would go 30, maybe,
maybe even more than that.
- 47
- 63.
- See, this is difficult, but it is really, the idea
is that deep sea Corps program. That's operated.
It's run by Dr. Thomas Herigan.
Tom Herigan is probably watching right now.
He will know that this site has thousands upon thousands of
these, of these animals.
And that's, what's so important.
It's not that it has 1003 versus 1027.
It's that, there's thousands here.
- From Noah colonies. I think these are a few,
these are the notes here,
but I think that the larger ones right in front of us are
Paraselene
have only been able to get an open view of them,
but that's my suspicion.
- That's another one of those yellow features.
- There's also some number of branch bamboo corals.
I've seen some black corals as well.
Pathopoiesis is here. Some amphid that's quite common.
Actually.
You could see a couple of different types of Amphipods
this mustard, brown Amphid
and then the nine o'clock position.
We have these from nodi colonies covered with Amphipods
different species of it as well.
Those look to be growing over in colonies of Narella.
- Seems like a really popular spot.
- Nice. Oh my gosh.
What is that, Chris?
- This is Victor Gorgias.
These are really beautiful down here.
They're always all purple. This is particularly purple.
So it may be a slightly different species, but,
and it was named after Victor. I gather.
- Crim nods or whatever they are.
That's quite the balancing act.
- Yeah.
Too big for this ride
- Seems to be a guy. You can see the stomach
fully averted there,
Looks dark darker red.
This is a serumuria colony
with hippestarius as the name of the sea star.
Saw some hippesteria,
a bit earlier feeding on a different oral colony.
I think it was, oh, might have also been a crazy chordoid.
- And a reminder to those who are relatively new to joining
us, watching Nautilus live
And you see these red fertile stars attached to the corals.
And you maybe think that I'm thinking they're eating the
coral, but they're not.
They're just using the coral as structure to get up into the
flow of water to filter out particles.
- Looks like it's inter noodle.
- Yeah, it looks like it's just above the node.
And most cases,
this yellow coloration is characteristic of a clad called
S one, which we've seen these on other dives.
We've seen a pretty dense gardens of these on previous
expeditions. Most notably with Oceana's Explorer,
there was quite a dense garden in the Jarvis island area of
these S ones
- Back into the precious corals.
They're extremely dense,
in parts of the Hawaiian islands.
This is a shame for our geologists friends.
Cause they can barely see the rocks.
- It's really stunning. Very cool.
- Yeah. That's credibly high density on this
little high here. There's a ton of anemones too.
Small ring anemones on the coral colonies.
There's at least three or four.
- This layering here, multiple.
This, these are different colonies?
- Yeah, yeah they are
- Oh, look at that.
Wow.
- Maybe this place was like, Hey,
you think you're turning around?
You're not turning around yet.
Yeah, we got a little something
Something for yeah.
- This one also has those brittle stars, small.
- The lasers are 10 centimeters, 10 centimeters apart.
So we use them to estimate the size of these organisms.
- Let's say at least a meter across.
- There it is
- Wow
- Well, hello there
- Scott Lobsters.
- Wow, that's an interesting colony.
Lots of associates.
- Lots of associates.
- Okay. They're all right there
just in that one little spot, but with separate,
separate individuals.
- soft corals.
- Soft corals at the base.
- Maybe some more of the seleniferous coral here.
- Certainly is a diverse, tiny little spot.
- With a lovely bamboo coral in the background.
- Right?