The crew of the research vessel E/V Nautilus erupted in excited chatter as they watched live video from a remotely operated vehicle traversing the German Channel in the Pacific island state of Palau.
“It’s finally happened!” someone could be heard saying as the camera on board the ROV Hercules zoomed in to reveal a lone deep-sea mollusk that shares the same name as the research vessel: a nautilus.
Nautiluses are very rarely seen in the wild, and this was the first time one was spotted in the 15 years of the E/V Nautilus mission. Adding to the mystique, nautiluses are ancient animals, ancestors to modern cephalopods, the class containing octopuses and squids. They first appeared 38 million years ago but their evolution can be traced back almost 500 million years, to a time before life evolved to live on land. Nautiluses are often referred to as a “living fossil.”
“It’s like watching a dinosaur,” someone says in the video, marveling at how the nautilus’s structure hasn’t changed in millions of years.
Founded by renowned oceanographer Robert Ballard, the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) operates the E/V Nautilus, which is equipped with ROVs for ocean exploration and a live video feed that can be viewed by researchers and the global public.
OET communications lead Marley Parker wrote on the NautilusLive blog: “Dreams come true indeed. After more than 1,000 ROV dives all around the world, we are filming the beautiful animal that shares our name.”
After the first one, the OET team saw three more nautiluses throughout the dive.
Coral Reef Research Foundation director Pat Colin, who was watching the live feed from shore, could be heard saying in the video that the nautilus they were looking at is a Palau nautilus (Nautilus belauensis). “Palau has been a hotbed for nautilus research for the past 50 years,” he said, adding that the population in the waters of Palau is stable.
The Palau nautilus is listed as near threatened on the IUCN Red List and protected from the international trade under the CITES convention. So little is known about other nautilus species that a conservation assessment can’t be made.
Parker said the E/V Nautilus’s ROVs hadn’t spotted a nautilus before because they’re usually found in shallower depths, between 90 and 500 meters (about 300-1,640 feet) in Palau. Normally, the Hercules operates at a depth of 1,000-4,000 m (3,300-13,100 ft), but it was traveling at a depth of 380 m (1,246 ft) when it spotted the four nautiluses.
Joining the OET and the Coral Reef Research Foundation for the dive is the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. During the expedition, the E/V Nautilus team documented the seabed and sand ripple features in the German Channel, an artificial passage cut through Palau’s barrier reef. The ROVs also encountered sixgill sharks (genus Hexanchus), according to the Nautilus Live press release.
Banner image of a Palau nautilus, courtesy of the Ocean Exploration Trust.
Credits
