Cold-Water Coral Reefs of the World

Cold-water corals form reef structures in continental margin and seamount settings world-wide, making them more wide-spread and abundant than shallow-water reefs. Their role in these ecosystems is no less important than the influence that shallow-water coral reefs have on tropical systems. They create habitat structure, host endemic species, enhance elemental cycling, alter current flow, sequester carbon, and provide many other ecosystem services that we are just beginning to understand. The rapidly evolving state of knowledge of cold-water and deep-sea coral reefs has not been compiled in over 10 years. This volume synthesizes recent and historical information, reveals new findings from reefs that have been discovered only recently, and presents key avenues for future research. We are on the cusp of understanding the critical role that cold-water coral reefs play in the world's oceans, and this book lays the foundation on which this knowledge will be built in the future.

Auteur

Dr. Erik E. Cordes is a Professor and Vice Chair of the Department of Biology at Temple University, and led the Cold-Water Coral chapters of the First and Second U.N. World Ocean Assessments. He has discovered and described new deep-sea coral habitats in temperate and tropical systems in the Atlantic and Pacific on over 30 research expeditions with manned and unmanned submersibles. Dr. Furu Mienis is a scientist at the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research in the department of ocean systems. She has participated in over 30 research cruises, the majority of which were carried out to study cold-water coral reefs in the Atlantic. She mainly studies the environmental conditions and dynamics that influence the functioning of these vulnerable ecosystems in the deep sea.