But plastic pollution and climate change are major threats.John Ryley, head of Sky News, said: “Broadcasting pictures from so far under the sea will take our audiences to places no one has been before.
“It’s with tremendous excitement but also trepidation that our team will embark on this ambitious project; excitement about uncovering an area of the planet that has yet to be fully explored, trepidation that the scale of the problem may be even greater than we fear it to be.”
The ocean covers more than 70% of the planet, yet less than 5% has been explored. We have better maps of Mars than we do of the seabed.
While shallow waters have been catalogued by scuba divers, the depths below 40m are rarely visited.
Oliver Steeds, the Nekton mission director, told Sky News: “I think we have been looking up when we should have been looking down.
“We have had this great era of space exploration and that has pushed back the frontiers of our knowledge.
“But the deep ocean is the last great frontier, the last great piece of our planet that we still don’t know about.”
Coral reefs are the most diverse ecosystem on the planet. They cover just 1% of the ocean floor, yet harbour 25% of marine species.
Not only do they support an extraordinary variety of life in the nooks and crannies of the coral, but open water fish are also drawn to the reefs to spawn.
Aldabra is on the edge of the Indian Ocean gyre, a rotating mass of water that draws in huge amounts of plastic rubbish from as far away as southeast Asia. Several tonnes of debris have washed up on the island.
The government of the Seychelles, which is collaborating with the mission, recently set aside an area of its territorial waters as a marine conservation zone. Aldabra is within the protected area.
The president, Danny Faure, is positioning the island nation as a world leader on ocean governance.
:: Sky’s Ocean Rescue campaign encourages people to reduce their single-use plastics. You can find out more about the campaign and how to get involved atwww.skyoceanrescue.com.
source:www.skynews.com
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