Dr Robin Wilson (Museum Victoria) and Dr Jane Fromont (WA Museum) on the trawl deck. Mark Lewis (CSIRO Marine) repairs gear in background.
Image: Anna Syme
Source: Museum Victoria
MV marine biologists survey Western Australia’s ocean depths.
Waiting for the next sample to be raised onto the rear deck of a ship, at 2am on a cold and heaving ocean, is not everyone’s idea of a good time. However for six of Museum Victoria’s marine biologists, this was just another part of the job over the last month.
Museum Victoria, in collaboration with CSIRO and the Western Australian Museum, has been participating in a ‘voyage of discovery’ along the SW Australian coast, to examine the multitude of animals that live on the deep-sea floor.
Unfortunately, Australia doesn’t have any submarines to spare, so sampling was done the old-fashioned way – with a trawl net and a metal box called a dredge.
The results were pretty exciting, and occasionally overwhelming. On the first two-week leg over 900 species were collected, including examples never seen before. Some samples were so large that it took over nine hours for the scientific team to photograph and prepare all the specimens they contained.
Many fascinating deep-sea critters were found: gigantic sea-spiders, blob and viper fish, brightly coloured sea-fans. And then there were the sponges – masses and masses of them, in every shape, colour and size.
As we know very little of their biology, this was a rare opportunity to observe live deep-sea creatures and measure any light that they produce. In the permanent darkness, many animals emit light to attract prey or mates, repel predators, or simply to hide their silhouette.