Introducing the mountains of the deep sea
My friends, if you ever climbed the highest mountain on the earth surface, do you ever imagine to dive into the mountain of the ocean? The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, between Iceland and the Azores creating a towering barrier between east and west with some peaks rising 3,500 metres above the ocean deep floor.
This vulnerable, highly productive and largely unexplored waters of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the vast underwater mountain chain in the Atlantic Ocean, have been classified as a Marine Protected Area (MPA) by senior officials from 15 countries at the 2008 meeting of the Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment in the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR).
From the WWF website, these 300,000km2 area of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge are rich in nutrients which collide with warmer Gulf Stream water and provide ideal conditions for production of plankton, makes it a haven for corals, sponges and other species, as well as for whales, bony fish and sharks, also a meeting hot spot of the northern and southern migratory species.
Below are couple of pictures from the Mid-Atlantic Ocean Ridge animals species, taken from the WWF website. Photo credits: Øystein Paulsen, IMR, Tracey Sutton, Marsh Youngbluth, Uwe Piatkowski, MAR-ECO and WWF.
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