What are seamounts and why are they interesting?
Seamounts are undersea peaks in the ocean floor – “mountains” rising from the bottom of the sea that do not break the water’s surface. They are important and interesting for several reasons: • They are excellent case studies for understanding marine biodiversity patterns: seamounts vary greatly in their biodiversity and levels of endemism, may be centers of speciation, and may act as “stepping stones” for the dispersal of coastal species, though these hypotheses are far from well tested. • They are often areas of high biomass that support commercially important fisheries and coral mining, and may support manganese crust mining in the near future. • They are fragile ecosystems that must be managed carefully and with good scientific information in order to prevent habitat damage and overfishing.
