Researchers exploring an ancient, underwater volcano off the Pacific coast of Canada have discovered it is still active — and “covered” in thousands of giant eggs.

Before the expedition, the team thought the volcano was extinct and the waters around it frigid. However, they found the underwater mountain — which towers 3,600 feet (1,100 meters) above the seafloor — spouting warm water and encrusted with deep-sea corals. The hot, mineral-rich fluid keeps the surrounding waters toasty, providing ideal conditions for some marine creatures to survive in the deep sea. The researchers were even more surprised to see a Pacific white skate (Bathyraja spinosissima) weaving in and out of the fronds and laying eggs on the summit, nearly a mile (1.5 kilometers) beneath the surface.

“It’s a really special place on top of a really special place,” Cherisse Du Preez, a deep-sea marine biologist with Fisheries and Oceans Canada and principal investigator on the expedition, told Live Science in an email. “The only previous finding of a Pacific white skate nursery was in the Galapágos and I think was on the order of a dozen or two eggs.”

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(Image credit: NEPDEP 2023)