Biological Communities on Seamounts and Other Submarine Features Potentially Threatened by Disturbance

Abstract

Seamounts are predominantly submerged volcanoes, mostly extinct, rising hundreds to thousands of metres above the surrounding seafloor. Some also arise through tectonic uplift. The conventional geological definition includes only features greater than 1000 m in height, with the term "knoll" often used to refer to features 100-1000 m in height (Yesson et al., 2011). However, seamounts and knolls do not appear to differ much ecologically, and human activity, such as fishing, focuses on both. We therefore include here all such features with heights > 100 m. Only 6.5 per cent of the deep seafloor has been mapped, so the global number of seamounts must be estimated, usually from a combination of satellite altimetry and multibeam data as well as extrapolation based on size-frequency relationships of seamounts for smaller features. Estimates have varied widely as a result of differences in methodologies as well as changes in the resolution of data. Yesson et al. (2011) identified 33,452 seamount and guyot features > 1000 m in height and 138,412 knolls (100-1000 m), whereas Harris et al. (2014) identified 10,234 seamount and guyot features, based on a stricter definition that restricted seamounts to conical forms. Estimates of total abundance range to >100,000 seamounts and to 25 million for features > 100 m in height (Smith 1991; Wessel et al., 2010). At least half are in the Pacific, with progressively fewer in the Atlantic, Indian, Southern, and Arctic Oceans. Identified seamounts cover approximately 4.7 per cent of the ocean floor, with identified knolls covering an additional 16.3 per cent, in total an area approximately the size of Africa and Asia combined, about threefold larger than all continental shelf areas in the world's oceans (Etnoyer et al., 2010; Yesson et al., 2011). Seamounts can influence local ocean circulation, amplifying and rectifying flows, including tidal currents, particularly near seamount summits, enhancing vertical mixing, and creating retention cells known as Taylor columns or cones over some seamounts. These effects depend on many factors, including the size (height and diameter) of the seamount relative to the water depth, its latitude, and the character of the flow around the seamount (White et al., 2007).