Four species of lobsters, about fifteen corals, eleven species of sponges, a starfish ... In total, more than thirty new marine species have been discovered in the depths of the Galapagos archipelago, in off the Ecuadorian coast. The explorations that led to these discoveries were carried out in 2015, but the results were not made public until Monday.
Philippe Vallette, oceanographer and general manager of the Nausicaa aquarium located in Boulogne-sur-Mer in the Pas-de-Calais, is delighted by these discoveries in particular because they are "large species, they are not bacteria or viruses". And faced with the erosion of biodiversity, "it is always good news to discover new species".
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"Witness to the complexity of living things"
The species discovered in the Galapagos Archipelago Nature Reserve, about 1,000 kilometers from the Ecuadorian coast, all have one thing in common: they live at very great depths. For this reason, they are not threatened by human activity and particularly by fishing. Most of the thirty species in fact evolve at a depth of more than 3,000 meters.
For Philippe Vallette, these species "bear witness to the complexity of living things". "What is important is the density of the ties that bind them together."