ABOUT THIS TRIP
The team will undertake an adventure into the blue, to black and back. They hope to return with the discovery of a new species, one that will help to reveal a piece in the evolutionary puzzle. Scientific support will be provided by Professors of cave biology, Professors Thomas Iliffe and Bill Humphreys.
Life underground
Caves are a hostile environment, home to the strangest of creatures. Remipedes are a rare class of crustacean that were first found only around 25 years ago and have only been found in deep cave systems including Central America, the Caribbean, the Canary Islands, and Western Australia. Where the oceanic and fresh waters meet deep inside these caves, a very unique environment is formed. This environment is the unique habitat, home to all known Remipedes.
Sardinia hosts extensive cave systems, connecting underground rivers with the ocean. On an exploration dive in 2008, two divers believe they encountered one of these mysterious and very rare creatures. Our mission is to return to the site and attempt to find and identify the animal. Was it indeed a remipede? Or another creature? If the creature can be found, whatever it is, it will be a first for this cave system and likely a new species.
The evolutionary question?
Strangely enough, despite the vast inhospitable distances between the sites where remipedes have been found, each species discovered is physically very similar. How can this be? Were the remipedes once common across the world, but as our planet changed ended up isolated only in these last few refuges? Have these species evolved in parallel in isolation? Finding a remipede will add more pieces to the evolutionary puzzle, figuring where exactly the remipedes fit and where they came from.
ABOUT GEOVENTURES
GeoVentures produces quality adventure, science, environment and natural history content in any media, with a strong focus on the underwater world.
Here are some examples of previous projects:
A GeoVentures production:
World First Freedive attempt through Fish Rock Cave:
Sacha Freediving the wreck of the Coolooli:
