Researchers at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity are still hard at work identifying and cataloguing around 7000 specimens of fish, crustaceans, cephalopods and gelatinous pelagic fauna caught during a 40-day cruise from Reunion Island to Algoa Bay, as part of an international information-gathering project, the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Project.
Researchers at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity are still hard at work identifying and cataloguing around 7000 specimens of fish, crustaceans, cephalopods and gelatinous pelagic fauna caught during a 40-day cruise from Reunion Island to Algoa Bay, as part of an international information-gathering project, the South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Project.
The West Indian Ocean is a site renowned for some of the most dynamic and variable large marine ecosystems on the planet. Realising the significance of the region, neighbouring countries have developed a collaborative project that embraces their own fishery-related needs and expectations in a regional and transboundary context.
In November 2009, experts in the marine sciences from Mauritius, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania and the Seychelles embarked on the fourth and final leg of cruises for the project.
The 40-day cruise on board the research vessel, Dr Fridtjof Nansen, started in October on Reunion Island and ended in Algoa Bay, in November, when the 7 000-odd specimens were brought to the institute to be identified and catalogued. The collection will remain at the institute, which is a National research Facility of the National Research Foundation, and home of the National Fish Collection.
“This cruise was particularly significant because the diversity of the region was unfamiliar,” said Aquatic Biologist at the South African Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity, Dr Monica Mwale. “Very little is known of the diversity of the species in the south-west Indian ocean region,” said Mwale.
She said the last cruise had been particularly concerned with seamounts and their associated biodiversity. A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor, according to Wikipedia, typically formed from extinct volcanoes, and often hundreds of metres below the surface. Because of their abundance, seamounts are one of the most common oceanic ecosystems in the world.
During the last cruise, 40 trawls were undertaken – 32 at seamount sites and eight in other areas, mostly between 300m and 900m below sea level. The South West Indian Ocean Fisheries Project is funded by the World Bank and is one of a trio of projects linked to Global Environment Facility supported projects.
The other two projects are the West Indian Ocean Land Based Sources of Pollution Project, implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme, and the Agulhas and Somali Current Large Marine Ecosystem Project, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme. The SA Institute of Aquatic Biodiversity plays an important role in all three.
