Undersea Hunter Group
Registered
So where do we start?
This was definitively a different week of work at Cocos Island, as we were assigned to sample sponges and corals from the island below 300m/1000ft.
The group behind the project was the alliance of Pharmamar (a Spanish based biotechnology company specialized in anti-tumor compounds) and InBio (Costa Ricas Biodiversity Institute). They seek to expand their knowledge of the underwater life in the pacific coastal waters of Costa Rica and Cocos Island.
Part of their mission was to do closed circuit rebreather dives to a max depth of 100m/300ft. For these dives the Pharmamar divers carefully extract samples by hand and bringing them up themselves. Through careful coordination and planning both the Pharmamar divers and our DeepSee team were able to orchestrate the delicate research in even the most challenging conditions. It is this type of teamwork and collaborative support that we at Undersea Hunter Group have worked to perfect for over 23 years.
But Cocos presents itself as a stronger challenge and that is when the DeepSee Submersible shows her greatest strength. We successfully dove four consecutive days to the absolute depth of 400m/1320ft and manage to extract from the wall of the island a variety of sponges, soft corals, urchins, starfish and even an inch-sized nudibranch!
In the process we also did a bit of mapping of unexplored areas and discovered huge canyons, lonely boulders and orange colored walls (perhaps metals incrusted on the basalt rock).
In the words of Carlos de Aguilor, head of the expeditions department:
"The scientific value of this is inestimable and yet to be known. The ocean covers 70% of the Earth's surface and corresponds to 90% of the biosphere. For millions of years innumerable forms of marine life have evolved to produce an immense variety of chemical entities of exclusive sophistication. Among these, there are molecules with potent biological activities, developed as a form of biochemical warfare to survive in an extremely competitive environment. With the help of DeepSee and Undersea Hunter Group, we hope that PharmaMar will identify anti-tumour potential molecules to create innovative treatments for cancer. Certainly the possibilities are endless and when you have a professional team working towards a defined goal then the results are just a natural consequence. What awaits for us in our future is still a mystery but we are proud to be participating in a great mission and we look forward to the next time we join hands with science to go were no one else does and see what no one else sees."
The Pilots
Click to read more about the Pharmamar Expeditions
Click for details about the DeepSee Submersible.
