What Animals Live in the Abyss of the Ocean

An international enquiry team has just returned from a voyage of deep sea discovery in Australia'southward eastern abyss. Check out the mysterious creatures they found in the deepest, darkest chasms of the ocean.

An international research team has merely returned from a voyage of deep body of water discovery with an astonishing multifariousness of weird and wonderful creatures from Australia's eastern abyss.

Considered one of the most inaccessible and unexplored environments on the planet, the team led by scientists from Museums Victoria pulled into port with a precious cargo of bizarre, unusual and even unnerving deep sea species discovered in the completeness – a dark, crushing environment 4000m below the surface.

Research in other parts of the world has plant that life in the abyss has evolved many highly unique means to survive.

The species discovered during this voyage will help provide important baseline information about the biodiversity and distribution of life in the deep ocean around Australia. More than i third of invertebrates and a number of the fishes plant are completely new to scientific discipline.

Called Sampling the Abyss, the 31-day voyage on our Marine National Facility research vessel Investigator brought together scientists from Museums Victoria, CSIRO, and other Australian and international museums and inquiry agencies.

So without further ado, let'south meet these abyssal finds.

Cherry spiny crab. Credit: Asher Flatt This bright cherry-red spiny crab sports an armour of spikes tailored to protect information technology from the dangers of the deep. These are not actually true crabs but related more to hermit crabs, although this hermit has traded in its shell for gnarly spikes.

Zombie worm. Credit: Maggie Georgieva Zombie worms are commonly institute in the decaying remains of whales on the bounding main flooring, burrowing into their basic to attain the sustenance inside. With no functioning mouths, guts or anuses, they have leaner that digest these grisly remains for them.

Glass sponge. Credit: Rob Zugaro These incredible glass sponges have a skeleton made of a lattice of silica fillaments, some of which tin can be up to a metre long! They feed by sifting bacteria and other single celled organisms from the water gently passing over their delicate glass housing.

Sipuncula or peanut worm. Credit: Rob Zugaro We know what your thinking and no, it'south not a sea cucumber. The peanut worm, not to be confused with the penis worm (despite appearances), is a deep sea worm resembling a... we'll leave information technology up to your imagination. When threatened they tin can contract their long caput inwards and more resemble a peanut. They can reproduce both sexually and asexually.

Giant anemone-sucking sea spider. Credit: Asher Flatt These alien lifeforms are not actually spiders at all but one of the oldest arthropods to grace planet globe. Simplicity is their motto, being niggling more a tube inside a tube. Many of ocean spiders have legs that glow in the night.

Red coffinfish. Credit: Rob Zugaro This mysterious trivial deep sea coffinfish with its bluish optics and red feet belongs to the anglerfish group. It attracts unsuspecting casualty using a fishing rod tipped with a fluffy allurement on height of its head. When threatened coffinfishes often inflate themselves with h2o to make themselves look more menacing.

This little guy is the deepest one collected in Australia and is potentially a new species.

Faceless Fish. Credit: Asher Flatt With no eyes and a Mona Lisa smile, the "faceless" fish had the crew completely baffled when it was brought upwardly from 4km beneath the surface.

The team were already conjuring up possible new scientific names when John Pogonoski, of the CSIRO's Australian National Fish Collection, found information technology while flicking through the pages of the scientific literature aboard.

Turns out the species was first collected in the northern Coral Ocean more than 140 years ago during the Voyage of HMS Challenger, the world's first round the world oceanographic trek.

Dense octopus. Credit: Rob Zugaro These octopus flap their ear-like fins to wing, but like the Disney grapheme of the aforementioned name, except this creature flaps its ears to glide gracefully through the deep night abyss.

Cookie cutter shark. Credit: Rob Zugaro This is a nasty little bioluminescent shark with its neatly arranged serrated teeth inhabits the oceanic 'twilight zone' in depths to 1000m. It preys on big fishes, whales, dolphins and the occasional unfortunate swimmer, latching onto them before gouging out cookie-sized chunks of flesh.

Blob fish. Credit: Rob Zugaro Mr Blobby, the social media phenomenon that was collected in the Tasman Sea in 2003 was voted the World'southward Ugliest Fish in 2013. Similar his cousin, this blob fish nerveless from a depth of ii.5km off New South Wales, has soft watery flesh and is an ambush predator that lies very still on the bottom waiting for unsuspecting prey to pass by.

More of import findings from this inquiry volition be released in the coming months as information and specimens are analysed in institutions around Australia.

In the concurrently, find out more than most our inquiry vessel Investigator.