麻豆社

Scientists have discovered an ancient, underwater volcano that is still active and is covered in up to a million giant skate eggs.

The volcano, nearly a mile beneath the Pacific coast of Canada, is spouting hot fluid, providing a little-known species of skate with an ideal nursery.

Before the expedition, the team thought the volcano was extinct and the waters around it frigid.

Cherisse Du Preez, a deep-sea marine biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and principal investigator on the expedition, said "I cheered out loud then I cried because it was such a breath taking scene, an incredible mesmerising symphony of life. The sheer mass of a new generation of deep sea animal that exists in this volcano is hard to imagine."

(Photo: deep-sea skate swimming in the Pacific ocean. Credit: Northeast Pacific Deep Sea Expedition & ROPOS)