SeamountsOnline holds records of species that have been collected from underwater seamounts, guyots and ridges, along with accessory information about when, where and how the samples were collected. The contents of SeamountsOnline is constantly growing as we find and incorporate new sources of data.

A Caution on Seamount Data

Seamounts, like all open ocean habitats, are understudied. In order to interpret the species distribution patterns found within the dataset it is vital to concurrently consider the sampling information. Many seamounts have not been sampled, and those that have may have records for only one or a few taxonomic groups from one or a few sampling events. If a particular species has not been recorded for a particular seamount, it may be that the species does not occur there, but it may well also be that the species is present but has not been found in the existing sampling. This database records species presences, but does not indicate where a species is absent. Instead, we provide as complete sampling information as possible to allow the user to assess for him or herself whether the lack of an observation is due to undersampling or a true absence.

Coming soon Data sources in SeamountsOnline

The sources of all data held by SeamountsOnline will be listed below, with the datasets that are new to Version 2008.1 marked with an asterisk.