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This year’s mission is a followup to last summer’s expedition to SGaan Kinglas-Bowie Seamount, Dellwood Seamount and Explorer, by scientists from Ocean Networks Canada and the Fisheries Department.

“That was the first-ever research expedition to explore underwater volcanoes and hydrothermal vents and to figure out what lives there and how best to protect them,” she said.

Two years ago, the federal government declared an interim closure of an 82,530-square-kilometre offshore area to bottom-contact commercial and recreational fishing to protect known seamounts and vents.

Using the robotic subs, the researchers will collect specimens several kilometres deep and with submersible drop cameras see for the first time what is living there.

High-resolution cameras, floodlights and sensors controlled from aboard the ship stream real-time images and data on temperature, oxygen levels and depth as the robots dive up to 2,000 metres. Live streaming will be broadcast by Fisheries beginning July 19 at 11 a.m. till 7 p.m. and daily between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. through July 28.

Last summer, researchers anchored monitors to the ocean floor to collect oceanographic data.

“When we collect that equipment, for the first time ever we will have a per-second reading of what is happening out there for an entire year,” said Du Preez.

Explorer Seamount will be in the researchers’ crosshairs this summer.

“We need to find out why it is such an outlier in every way, the environment around it, the animals that were on it,” she said. “There is an ancient forest made of glass sponge, almost like it has been petrified.”

“We were very giddy watching those images so we can’t wait to get back there to figure how this old growth forest exists kilometres under the ocean,” she said.

Data collection and sample collection will run 24 hours a day while the vessel CCGS John P. Tully is on site.

“A lot of what we find is undescribed science. Every time we go down we see things no one has seen before,” she said.

Exotic creatures — historically “sea monsters” — are occasionally dragged from the depths by fishermen, “but they are always dead or dying.”

“Now, we get to see them as they live,” said Du Preez.

rshore@postmedia.com