NW Pacific Deep-sea Benthos Biodiversity (Beneficial Project)

In the past decade, the biology of the bathyal, abyssal, and hadal faunas of all size classes(meio- macro-, and megabenthos) of the NW Pacific have been intensively investigated based on a Memorandum of Understanding (2007) between Russian and German partners. A total of four Russian-German and German-Russian expeditions with the RV Akademik M.A. Lavrentyev and RV Sonne have provided a wealth of data on the systematics, evolution and biogeography of the deep-sea faunas of the Sea of Japan (SojaBio, 2010) (Malyutina and Brandt 2013), Sea of Okhotsk (SokhoBio, 2015) (Malyutina et al. 2018), the Kuril-Kamchatka Trench (KKT), and the NW Pacific open abyssal plain adjacent to the KKT (KuramBio I and II, 2012 - 2016) (Brandt et al. 2019; Brandt et al. 2018; Brandt et al. 2020; Brandt and Malyutina 2015).

The goals of these expeditions were to study the biodiversity, biogeography, and evolution of the benthic organisms in different NW Pacific deep-sea environments. We aimed to compare more isolated deep-sea basins with more easily accessible ones (Sea of Japan vs. Sea of Okhotsk) and to test whether the hadal bottom of the trench of the KKT isolates the fauna from the Sea of Okhotsk to the fauna of the open NW Pacific area. The faunal composition of these areas comprising systematic, ecological, and biogeographical data, as well as evolution of protists, selected invertebrate taxa and fish, has been published in four scientific volumes, and includes the formal descriptions of many species, some genera, and one family (Brandt et al. 2020; Brandt and Malyutina 2015; Malyutina and Brandt 2013; Malyutina et al. 2018; Saeedi et al. 2020).

Based on these expeditions, the Beneficial project (Biogeography of the northwest Pacific fauna. A benchmark study for estimations of alien invasions into the Arctic Ocean in times of rapid climate chance) was designed. The main aims of the Beneficial project were 1- digitizing the biodiversity and environmental data collected during our expeditions, 2- discovering the deep-sea biogeography and biodiversity patterns in the NW Pacific, 3- predicting the potential future distribution range shifts of key species from the NW Pacific to the Arctic Ocean under rapid climate change, and 4- compiling a novel book on the taxonomy and biogeography of the highly abundant key species. All the data, publications, and the book arising from this project provide crucial benchmarks and datasets for any deep-sea biodiversity assessment, and help predict the future status of the Arctic marine ecosystem in a changing environment (Brandt et al. 2020; Canonico et al. 2019; Saeedi et al. 2019b; Saeedi et al. 2019c; Saeedi et al. 2019d; 2020; Saeedi et al. 2019e).