The Madeira archipelago offers an interesting opportunity to study marine habitats, the organisms that live there, and how they will be affected by or respond to changes in the environmental conditions around them. Marine communities in Madeira’s coastal habitats have been thoroughly surveyed over the years, with recent studies documenting patterns and processes related to anthropogenic pressures, including marine invasive species, ‘tropicalisation’ and marine litter. However, the vast majority of these studies have focused solely on coastal habitats and on biofouling communities. As is the case in many parts of the world, Madeira’s mesophotic and deep-sea habitats remain largely unexplored. Deep-sea exploration around the island of Madeira has been limited to occasional scientific expeditions since 1960. However, recent studies have identified unique organisms and habitats, including isolated corals (Scleractinia), forests of shade-tolerant kelp, black coral and whip coral gardens, sponge aggregations and crinoid aggregations.
The main aim of the DARWIN_Lab project is to continue the exploratory work begun in 2019 and, with a multidisciplinary team, to carry out a rigorous characterisation and mapping of mesophotic and aphotic habitats, as well as to identify the relevant factors that may affect community structure at a local scale, whilst also comparing these findings with other regions within the Atlantic context. Furthermore, the DARWIN_Lab project will use the mesophotic and aphotic habitats of Madeira as a case study to better understand local, regional and global geographical patterns of biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and the ecological characteristics of coastal habitats at depths between 30 and 800 metres, and to determine how these may be influenced by different human pressures and environmental conditions (e.g. temperature regime, light, sedimentation, maritime traffic, litter, fishing, human population density). By using the island of Madeira as a Natural Laboratory in a joint and pioneering effort, this project will utilise available modern technologies, including scientific divers, a drifting deep-sea camera, ROVs, artificial structures, ‘quick-release’ systems and BRUVs, as well as a multidisciplinary team, to address various gaps in our understanding of the ecology of mesophotic and aphotic marine habitats.