Welcome to Spotlight. I’m Anne Muir.

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　　And I’m Bruce Gulland. Spotlight uses a special English method of broadcasting. It is easier for people to understand - no matter where in the world they live.

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　　Aurélie Spadone knows all about mountains. She lives in Switzerland, close to some of the highest mountains in Europe. But Aurélie has just been on a trip to study mountains of a very different sort. Normally you look up to see mountains - but for these mountains, Aurélie had to look down; deep down. Aurélie has been studying mountains that are thousands of metres under the sea. Scientists have a special name for these underwater mountains. They call them ‘seamounts’. Today’s Spotlight is on ‘seamounts’.

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　　To be a true seamount, a mountain has to be completely under the sea. It also has to be more than one thousand metres high. All the world’s oceans contain seamounts. There are over 100,000 of them in the world - and yet scientists have studied only about a hundred of them in detail. There is still a lot about seamounts that we do not know.

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　　Seamounts are most commonly volcanic. Like volcanoes on land, they are formed by melted rock coming from under the earth’s surface. In some cases the seamounts can grow very quickly as fresh rock rises from the sea bed. One example is near the coast of Grenada. This seamount increased its height by 75 metres in just twenty years. And because seamounts are volcanic, they are most common in particular areas. These are the areas where the earth’s continents meet. One of these areas is in the Indian Ocean. This is where Aurélie’s ship has been.

　　Aurélie is one of twenty scientists who have been on a six week trip to the south-west Indian Ocean. They wanted to study the creatures that live on the seamounts.

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　　Ocean currents move water across the bottom of the sea all the time. When these currents meet a seamount they push water up the side of the seamount, towards the surface. The water carries material from the bottom of the ocean - including small plants and animals. Fish and other sea animals feed on this material - and so seamounts become special places where sea life grows very well. This makes seamounts very interesting to the scientists. On this trip, the scientists studied five seamounts.

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　　The scientists explored the seamounts using an underwater vehicle. They controlled the vehicle from their ship. No-one rides in this vehicle; instead it is full of cameras and measuring equipment. It can also collect material from the bottom of the sea, including plants and animals. It brings them back to the surface for the scientists to study. Aurélie was clearly excited to see the first dive of the vehicle, with all the different sea animals. She wrote about it on the trip's Internet website:

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　　“I must admit it was amazing, watching the live pictures from the vehicle, looking at these small red shrimps, crabs, colourful corals, sponges and fish swimming in front of the vehicle.”

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　　It is very probable that some of the sea animals that the scientists have found on these seamounts will prove to be new species - animals unknown before this trip.

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　　But Aurélie and the other scientists have not just been looking for interesting new sea animals. The main reason for their trip was to protect the seamount environment from harm. The problem is that scientists are not the only people who like seamounts. The fishing industry has discovered that seamounts have plenty of fish. This is because the rising water brings sea life from the deep sea. Fish feed on this sea life. Fishing boats come to take advantage of these large numbers of fish. But this leads to a problem. The fishing boats use large, heavy nets that they pull along the bottom of the sea. The nets are designed to rub along the bottom of the sea - the sea bed. In this way they catch the fish that are hiding on or near the sea bed - but they also damage the sea bed.

　　Doctor Alex Rogers was the chief scientist on the trip. He told the BBC:

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　　“The fishing boats use equipment that destroys natural systems that live on the seamounts. When the fishing equipment comes near, creatures dive down to the sea bed. This is how they behave to avoid their natural enemies. But the fishers often use bottom nets to catch these animals. These nets have huge metal doors to keep the nets open. The nets also have huge rollers to permit them to bounce along the sea bed. These nets completely crush very delicate, weak animals like corals.”

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　　The scientists on the ship have no power to prevent the fishing industry from using these harmful methods. But their studies have increased the knowledge of how serious the problem is. They found evidence of human damage on all five of the seamounts that they visited. On one seamount they saw a fishing boat working. The scientists could clearly see serious damage caused by fishing. They could also see that sea life was healthy in the areas without fishing.

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　　Aurélie looked back and thought about the wonderful sea creatures she and the other scientists had seen. She wrote of tall tree-like structures made of coral, bright coloured shrimps, urchins shaped like sticks, angry-looking crabs, glass-like sponges and funny looking big-eyed fish. And, she said, the list goes on.

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　　“We count ourselves among the few honoured people who have seen live images of these amazing things - a thousand metres and more below the surface of the oceans in that cold, dark and quiet world.”

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　　So, the scientists finished their trip to the seamounts with mixed feelings. They saw the wonder of unknown and beautiful sea creatures, but they also saw the damage humans are doing to these wonderful creatures’ home.

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　　Pierre-Yves Cousteau is a famous expert on underwater life. He wrote about the group's findings on their Internet website. Let us give him the last word:

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　　“Life is a chance. As far as we know it only exists right here, on this planet. We mistakenly call this planet ‘Earth’ when really it is mostly covered in water. We must care for it, or we will watch it drop slowly through our open hands.”

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　　The writer of this programme was Mike Procter. The producer was Luke Haley. The voices you heard were from the United States and the United Kingdom. All quotes were adapted for this program and voiced by Spotlight. You can listen to this program again, and read it, on the internet at http://www.radioenglish dot net. This program is called, ‘Mountains Under the Sea’.

　　We hope you can join us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye

　　- See more at: http://spotlightenglish.com/listen/mountains-under-the-sea#sthash.EGiDAEoj.dpuf