Importance and recent research of ecosystem in open sea including the deep-sea environment

Abstract

Deep-sea is the largest, but probably the biologically least explored biotope. Historically, the deep-sea has held our attention as a source of food and treasure, mystery and exploration. New results from numerous expeditions often obtained with sophisticated instruments and application of newly developed methods have changed our view on the concept of utility value of deep-sea. The recent theme of deep ocean research are the climate change, utilization of deep-sea living resources, hydrothermal vents, deep-sea biodiversity and environmental problem about mining materials. Many of the pressing questions in deep-sea biology are large in scale and so early results from the various field projects of the international Census of Marine Life (CoML) programme feature, notably from ChEss (Biogeography of Chemosynthetic Environments), MAR-ECO (Mid Atlantic Ridge Ecosystems), CeDAMar (Census of the Diversity of Abyssal Marine Life), CenSeam (Census of Seamount Biodiversity), COMARGE (Continental Margin Ecosystems on a Worldwide Scale), CAML (Census of Antarctic Marine Life) and ArcOD (Artic Ocean Diversity). Korea is in an advantageous situation for the acquisition of marine and extreme bioresources because as a peninsular nation, it faces the sea on three sides and has research stations in polar and tropical areas. Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute (KORDI) has conducted marine biological surveys in the surrounding deep-sea and world ocean using Research Vessel Onnuri to explore marine deep-sea resources since 1995. Next paragraphs introduced the several results of ecosystem about deep ocean from korea. 1) Study on the biological change caused by climate change in North Pacific Total zooplankton biomass (mgC/㎥) were the highest in the East China Sea among 4 regions (East China Sea, Japan EEZ, Philippine EEZ, longitude 130°E or 135°E) in the both year. The total zooplankton biomass was dramatically lower in other regions than that of the East China Sea.