{"id":94644,"date":"2025-08-25T00:30:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T00:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94644\/"},"modified":"2025-08-25T00:30:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T00:30:08","slug":"scientists-plumb-the-depths-of-quebecs-sea-floor-searching-for-climate-answers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/94644\/","title":{"rendered":"Scientists plumb the depths of Quebec\u2019s sea floor searching for climate answers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mud samples taken by scientists in Quebec’s Saguenay fjord uncovered many lifeforms, including brittle stars.HO\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

Far below the seals and belugas that dive gracefully through Quebec\u2019s Saguenay fjord, there are small creatures burrowing in the sea floor mud that scientists believe play a crucial role in mitigating the effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month, scientists from the United Kingdom and Universit\u00e9 Laval spent several days on the fjord\u2019s bumpy waters, grabbing samples from 200 metres below in a quest to track the life in the mud.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dr. Adam Porter, a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Exeter, said the sea can look like an \u201cimpenetrable blue\u201d for those on the surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think mud is even more impenetrable because you get down to the bottom, you look at the sea floor, it can often look like there\u2019s not much going on,\u201d he said in a video interview. \u201cBut there\u2019s this whole world of life under the mud, and that is playing a really important role in keeping the planet healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The research is part of the Convex Seascape Survey, a partnership exploring how the sea floor regulates climate<\/a> through the sequestration of carbon, and the role that small animals in the mud play in keeping the planet healthy, Porter said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Unofficially, he said the study has another title: \u201cTrying to make mud sexy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebecca Howman, a PhD student at Universit\u00e9 Laval, said collecting the roughly 60 sea floor samples was complicated by the Saguenay fjord\u2019s tides, waves and current.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to literally take a chunk of the floor off the ground, and considering that the Saguenay is 200 metres deep, that\u2019s quite a feat,\u201d she said in an interview. From the boat, the scientists used what she describes as a \u201cbig claw\u201d to scoop samples, which were transferred to aquariums the scientists could use to study and experiment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very messy, very muddy, but also a good challenge and really quite fun,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After they were pulled from the fjord\u2019s bottom, the samples were transferred to aquariums in Chicoutimi, Que., for study. Porter said the researchers put fluorescent sand on top of the mud in order to track the burrowing movements of the animals, some of which are too small to spot with the naked eye.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A polychaete worm found in the mud samples.HO\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

What emerged from the mud was a tiny world, teeming with life. \u201cYou can get worms, brittle stars, bivalves \u2013 so mussel-like organisms,\u201d Howman said. \u201cSo loads of different types of life live within the mud, which is interesting because you look at mud and you don\u2019t think that there\u2019s anything really going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the creatures are small, she likened them to \u201clittle ocean gardeners\u201d that help keep the sea floor healthy and ultimately support the whole marine ecosystem. \u201cThe way that they move the sediment changes the entire structure of the ecosystem,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it can support the ecosystem by changing nutrient fluxes \u2013 it oxygenates the sediment.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said they also help store carbon in the sea floor by eating or trapping the organic matter that falls from above \u2013 a role that the researchers say could be crucial to mitigating the effects of climate change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Porter described the floor of oceans and seas as \u201cone of the largest carbon stores on Earth,\u201d holding more carbon than the rainforests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The worry, he said, is that when the sea floor is disturbed through activities such as trawling, dredging or mining, \u201cwe are potentially releasing carbon and undoing any efforts that we\u2019re making to try and reduce our carbon emissions on land.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

He hopes the five-year Convex Seascape Survey, which is taking place in countries around the world, will help researchers identify areas of the sea floor that are particularly important for carbon sequestration, and ultimately help convince decision-makers to protect them.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many countries \u2013 including Canada \u2013 have signed a pledge to protect 30 per cent of the world\u2019s land and oceans by 2030. That includes the sea floor, Porter said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Mud samples taken by scientists in Quebec’s Saguenay fjord uncovered many lifeforms, including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,66,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-94644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-science","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}