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A kind of “faceless fish” was found by Australian researchers recently, during a scientific voyage studying parts of the ocean from Launceston in Tasmania north towards the Coral Sea, an area which has remained untouched.
The fish has only been recorded once before by the pioneering scientific crew of HMS Challenger off Papua New Guinea in 1873, said the researchers.
Besides, many other weird but wonderful new species, such as right red spiky rock crabs, puffed-up coffinfish and blind sea spiders, have been discovered from the deep waters off Australia.
According to Tim O'Hara, the chief scientist on board "The Investigator" from Museums Victoria, the search area was "the most unexplored environment on earth".
The month-long journey off Australian's eastern seaboard started on May 15, and has been surveying life lurking in a dark and cold abyss that plunges four kilometers below the surface, using nets, sonar and deep-sea cameras.
At such huge depths, it is so dark that creatures often have no eyes or produce their own light through bioluminescence, O'Hara added. At such depths - no light, little food and freezing temperatures - animals need to evolve unique ways to survive. At the same time, animals are usually small and move slowly as food is scarce.
"We've got 27 scientists on board who are leaders in their fields and they tell me that around one-third of what we've found are new species," said O'Hara, with several thousand specimens so far retrieved and two weeks of the trip still to go.
Working in such an environment was challenging, O'Hara admitted, with each fishing expedition taking up to seven hours to deploy and retrieve the equipment and its eight kilometers of cable from the sea floor, given it is so far down.
But the data gathered was helping to improve the understanding of Australia's deep-sea habitats, their biodiversity and the ecological processes that sustain them, O'Hara said.
"This will assist in its conservation and management and help to protect it from the impacts of climate change, pollution and other human activity," he said.
(AFP)
