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The current marine expedition by CONICET, called “Submarine Oases of the Mar del Plata Canyon: Continental Slope IV”, is being broadcast live worldwide through the Schmidt Ocean’s YouTube channel.
This research, which has international funding, represents an unprecedented technological and scientific leap, and is expected to have a significant impact both scientifically and socially and culturally.
The research team aims to generate 3D models of emblematic species and develop educational material for schools and museums. In addition, they have committed to publish all the data obtained in open repositories of public access, such as CONICET Digital, OBIS, and GenBank.
The central objective of this mission is to study the distribution of marine species and their relationship with various environmental, topographic, and oceanographic variables.
Thanks to the use of ROV SuBastian and the live broadcast, the current campaign has managed to record for the first time in the Argentine coast abyssal fish and behaviors never before observed at these depths.
The real-time images, being broadcasted to anyone interested in viewing them, will be available until August 10th. It is planned that the team of the marine expedition will be back on the continent the following day, August 11th.
The excitement of the marine expedition
Daniel Lauretta, researcher at CONICET in the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences (MACN) and chief scientific of the campaign, expressed his amazement at the discoveries: “Sometimes we find organisms that no one had seen before, or interactions that we don’t know how to explain. It’s like exploring another planet, but under the water.”
Additionally, Lauretta highlighted the inherent excitement of each immersion: “The most exciting thing is that, every immersion, there is something new to discover.”
The Mar del Plata submarine canyon: a biodiversity hotspot
The Mar del Plata submarine canyon, located at the boundary between the Brazil and Malvinas currents, has been revealed as a key biogeographic frontier and a true biodiversity hotspot, comparable to the great marine canyons worldwide.
🦀Seguí conociendo más sobre la expedición y las especies que habitan el Mar Argentino en https://t.co/uKXOBVys2k
— CONICET Dialoga (@CONICETDialoga) August 1, 2025
The researcher from the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), Daniel Lauretta, also emphasized the impact of the live broadcast: “That anyone can connect from their home and see live what we are seeing, is a unique opportunity.
Suddenly, science stops being something distant or inaccessible, and becomes part of everyday life.”
The live broadcast of this marine expedition by CONICET, which allows observing the depths of the Argentine Sea, has generated great expectation and excitement among users of the social network X (formerly Twitter) due to the surprising biodiversity it has revealed.
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