16 October 2025 press release

Just above the seafloor lies the hyperbenthos—a hidden, little-known habitat teeming with life. In Norwegian waters, this zone may hold more biodiversity than the sea above, yet it has barely been explored. With fresh funding from Artsdatabanken, the new project HYPERS, led by Sanna Majaneva at Akvaplan-niva, will shine a light on this overlooked ecosystem. The team will use advanced sampling and species identification techniques to study little-known groups such as hydrozoans, comb jellies, arrow worms, and tiny crustaceans. Their work could reveal species never before recorded in Norway—and perhaps even species new to science.

The project is carried out in collaboration with the University Museum of Bergen, the Institute of Marine Research, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Institute of Oceanology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, and the Senckenberg Ocean Species Alliance (SOSA) at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Germany. We look forward to the new discoveries HYPERS will bring from this little-known world just above the seafloor.

More information here: https://akvaplan.no/no/prosjek...