Lisbon, May 5, 2026 (Lusa) – The unique ecosystem of the Gorringe Bank seamount will be presented on Wednesday at the Lisbon Oceanarium in the documentary "The Giant of the Atlantic", the film is scheduled for public broadcast on a television channel on 24 May.
"Portugal has there, in the middle of the ocean, a monument of biodiversity, a Jerónimos, a Belém Tower, or a Batalha Monastery. The documentary aims to showcase this heritage, this wealth," Emanuel Gonçalves, administrator and scientific lead of the Oceano Azul Foundation (FOA), told Lusa.
The promotion of the ecosystem, studied by a scientific expedition in September 2024, also serves to raise awareness about the need to protect that marine area, he said.
Oceanic areas are a typical case of out of sight, out of mind. Gonçalves warned that "the perception that the distant ocean has no problems because it is too far and too large to suffer impacts is not true."
This underlines the importance of outreach works like the documentary "Gorringe - The Giant of the Atlantic". The film features footage captured during the scientific expedition by Nuno Sá, an award-winning underwater camera operator and director known for his work on the BBC's Blue Planet series and for National Geographic.
The Gorringe Bank lies about 130 nautical miles (approximately 240 kilometres) south-west of Cape St. Vincent. It is an underwater mountain range roughly 180 kilometres long and 60 kilometres wide, featuring two main peaks: the Gettysburg and Ormonde seamounts. Although submerged, they rise from depths of about 5,000 metres and are taller than the Pico (Azores) and Serra da Estrela mountains combined, making them the highest mountains in Western Europe.
Both peaks are high-biodiversity ecosystems, with habitats ranging from kelp forests to deep-sea cold-water coral reefs.
Images by Nuno Sá, captured at depths from the surface down to 60 metres, reveal the life of a seamount explored by nearly 30 scientists from 14 research centres. During the three-week expedition, promoted by the FOA alongside the Lisbon Oceanarium, the Institute for Nature Conservation and Forests (ICNF), and the Portuguese Navy, researchers recorded at least seven cetacean species, 55 types of algae, 12 coral species, 36 fish species, and 523 types of invertebrates.
The documentary will have its official presentation this Wednesday, following a preliminary screening at the United Nations Ocean Conference in Nice, France in June 2025. The film results from over 100 hours of high-definition video, equivalent to 24 terabytes (TB) of data, and a continuous three-month editing process.
"I have filmed from the Antarctic to the Arctic, and this was perhaps the physically toughest situation I have ever faced because the currents were truly very strong," he said. The underwater filmmaker explained that the Gorringe Bank is the peak of an ocean mountain rising from depths of thousands of metres, creating sudden currents. "Sometimes, in five minutes, we went from no current to a current like a river where it was impossible to move forward even one metre," he said.
Sá told Lusa that, beyond the kelp forests, the footage highlights an unusual concentration of marbled electric rays at Gorringe Bank.
"I can sincerely say that in my entire life I have seen perhaps half a dozen electric rays together, and there we saw several thousand, in various concentrations of hundreds, all females and most of them pregnant," he said, stressing the importance of protecting that ecosystem.
The September 2024 expedition produced scientific knowledge to support the declaration of the Gorringe Bank as a Marine Protected Area. It will integrate into the future D. Carlos Marine Natural Reserve, which will become the largest marine protected area in Portugal and one of the largest in the European Union. Covering 173,000 square kilometres, the reserve will span nearly twice the area of Portugal's land territory.
JMR/RYOL // ADB.
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