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July 25, 2010

On the way to Baleares, mountains in the Ibiza canal

BY: Silvia García

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© OCEANA

 

It is 5:00 P.M. and we are about to arrive at Formentera, hoping to find a place to moor. Here begins the last phase of the campaign, focused on the submerged mountains of Baleares.

Today we had finished with the immersions in the Ibiza canal. These have been the first film recordings of these sea beds, as up to now only geologic studies of the area had been carried out, and there had not previously been any biological data. We have been able to film the mud cliffs on which a great quantity of organisms, such as worms, mollusks, crustaceans and some species of fish, such as rays, dogfish, scorpion fish, fork beards, and many more, depend. The zone where the underlying rock blooms is also home to a great variety of species, many of them sessile, as are the sponges – some of which we were able to identify and many others not -, bryozoa, polychaete, and many more.