A team of researchers, led by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center, is surveying an underwater mountain chain in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean to study its biodiversity. The international research team is working aboard the 208-foot NOAA ship Henry B. Bigelow as part of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge Ecosystem Project, or MAR-ECO. This project is one of 14 field programs that are part of the Census of Marine Life, a 10-year global study of the abundance, distribution and diversity of marine life in the world’s oceans. The Census began in 2000 and seeks, by 2010, to determine what lives in the ocean and how this life has changed with time. More information about the expedition is available online.