Tim O’Hara from Museums Victoria, the chief scientist onboard “The Investigator,” told news media the area they were presently searching was “the most unexplored environment on earth.”
Since beginning the voyage that set out from Launceston in Tasmania, traveling north towards the Coral Sea on May 15, the research team has been using nets, sonar, and deep-sea cameras to explore the abyss, and they have come across some remarkable marine creatures, some of them never seen before, reports ABC.net.au.
The team has come across deep-sea eels, bright red spiky rock crabs, puffed-up coffin fish, blind sea spiders, and even some carnivorous sponges that are covered with lethal spicules made of silicon, sort of like velcro. They use their Velcro-like spines to snag small crustaceans, and then they slowly digested in-situ.
But perhaps the most unusual creature they came across was a 16-inch faceless fish, Typhlonus nasus, which researchers are calling a Faceless Cusk-eel. “It hasn’t got any eyes or a visible nose and its mouth is underneath,” O’Hara said from the ship. “It looks like two rear-ends on a fish, really,” added O’Hara.
“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.
T. nasus is found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans and lives at depths ranging from 3,935 to 5,100 meters (12,910 to 16,732 feet). It is the only known member of its genus. And while the faceless fish appears to have no eyes, they are present but buried way under the surface.
Actually, the faceless fish was first collected on August 25, 1874, in the Coral Sea, by the crew of the HMS Challenger during the world’s first round the world oceanographic expedition. The latest specimen looks a whole lot chubbier than the one collected in 1874.
It should be pointed out that creatures living in the depths of the abyss have managed to evolve, developing unique ways to survive in their environment of crushing pressures, with no light, little food, and a temperature of around 34 degrees Fahrenheit.
It will be interesting to see what else the researchers find as they continue their journey of exploration. But all the data being gathered will help us to better understand “Australia’s deep-sea habitats, their biodiversity and the ecological processes that sustain them,” said O’Hara.
