The expedition has been a great success, we located over 40 marine lakes new to science!
Some lakes turned out to be impossible for us to reach due to treacherous cliffs surrounding the lakes. If we had real rock-climbing equipment we would possibly have been able to do it, but even then there’s little way of climbing razorsharp yet brittle karst cliffs that go straight up at a 90 degree angle…..
The diversity of lakes that we did get to survey is immense. Different colors, different depths, salinities, shaped, sizes, and lots of different organisms. On the whole sponges, algae and mussels were the most dominant groups.
Video from inside a lake of cliff and jungle surroundings
Marine lakes represent a geomorphological gradient of highly connected lakes to highly isolated lakes. The highly connected lakes contain water that is similar to the reefs and house mostly species from reefflats, sometimes even stony coral.
Video of coral in a more connected marine lake
The more isolated the lake is, the lower the salinity typically is and the more unique species it contains. In the isolated lakes of Misool we have found many rare species that are only known from a few isolated lakes in the world. Additionally we have collected at least 10 species new to science.
Video of sampling among mangroves in a highly isolated marine lake
This is some in depth information about the lakes, new to me as well. Thank you for sharing the information and keep posting such posts
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