“The discoveries provide us with a glimpse into how our marine fauna fits into the interconnected abyssal environment worldwide and for the scientists, adds another piece to the puzzle of what affects evolution in the deep sea. Museums Victoria ichthyologist Dr Martin Gomon said the abyss voyage was the first systematic attempt to examine life at abyssal depths anywhere along Australia’s vast coast line. “We are investigating possible new species and fishes never before recorded in Australian waters.” Mr Pogonoski said the voyage was frontier science vital for increasing our understanding of the deep sea environment. “We use a mix of morphological and molecular approaches to identify deep water species because they are typically poorly known to science,” Mr Pogonoski said. Images of this fish went viral across the world.ĭuring the month-long voyage, the research team deployed a variety of survey equipment, including a beam trawl and benthic sled, to collect fishes and invertebrates at depths of almost 5000 metres, which is a new capability for an Australian research vessel.ĬSIRO ichthyologist John Pogonoski said they spent many hours processing the samples on board, separating the different species, photographing specimens, preserving or freezing some of the catch for later processing, and extracting muscle samples for DNA analysis.
The voyage led to a number of important findings, including the rediscovery of the “faceless” fish, a bizarre deep-sea fish with no-visible eyes and a mouth on the underside of its head. “The survey collected some very rare and unusual species, and represents one of the deepest collections of fishes from Australian waters.” “The abyss is the largest and deepest habitat on the planet, covering half the world’s oceans and one third of Australia’s territory, but it remains the most unexplored environment on Earth,” Mr Graham said. Manager of the Australian National Fish Collection, Alastair Graham, said Australia has a vast marine estate to manage and some areas, such as the abyssal depths, are largely unexplored. Some of the weird and wonderful discoveries from the voyage included blob fishes, cousins of Mr Blobby who was voted the World’s Ugliest Fish in 2013, bioluminescent cookie-cutter sharks with razor sharp serrated teeth, a haul of frightening lizard fish, and graceful tripod fish, which prop on high off sea floor on long fins waiting for food to drift within reach. Over 100 different fish species were collected, some of which are possibly new to science, and will go under the microscope at the CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection (ANFC). The collection was gathered last year during the Sampling the Abyss voyage on research vessel Investigator and come from the deep ocean at depths of up to 4800 metres. 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 kilometres of cable from the sea floor, given it is so far down.īut 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.Scientists are gathering in Hobart this week to examine some of the over 42,000 deep-sea fishes and inverterbrates (including the cousin of Mr Blobby - voted World's Ugliest Fish in 2013) collected from Australia’s eastern abyss. Many are jelly-like and spend their lives floating about, while others have ferocious spines and fangs and lie in wait until food comes to them. Life at such depths is one of crushing pressures, no light, little food and freezing temperatures, with animals that call it home evolving unique ways to survive.Īs food is scarce, they are usually small and move slowly.
"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.
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