SYDNEY, Dec. 19 (Xinhua) -- Australian scientists on Wednesday said they have discovered new areas of deep-sea coral reef and more than 100 unnamed marine species, including lobsters and molluscs, following a major survey of waters off island state Tasmania.
"While it will take months to fully analyze the coral distributions, we have already seen healthy deep-sea coral communities on many smaller seafloor hills and raised ridges away from the seamounts, to depths of 1,450 meters," Alan Williams, chief scientist of the research voyage under the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), said in a statement.
"This means that there is more of this important coral reef in the Huon and Tasman Fracture marine parks than we previously realized," Williams said.
Researchers in the month-long survey deployed a high-tech camera system two meters above the seafloor in a depth of 1,900 meters, collecting 60,000 images and about 300 hours of video footage for analysis, Williams said.
Other than the dense coral reefs, hundreds of marine organisms including tulip-shaped glass sponges in vivid colors, bioluminescent squids, ghost sharks and basketwork eels were found attached to or near the seafloor, the researchers reported. A high proportion of the mollusc species collected were unknown, they said. Above the water, an observation team also collected data on more than 40 species of seabirds as well as several whale and dolphin species.
"Research voyages such as these are critically important to helping us understand, appreciate and protect Australian marine parks," Jason Mundy from the government's Parks, Australia environment agency, said.
"The images from this voyage remind us what extraordinary and diverse environments we are protecting in these special places," Mundy said.
