New Deep Ocean Creatures

An anonymous reader writes "NORFANZ was a recent expedition that went really deep into the ocean in the search for new species that live in the largely unchartered waters of the Tasman Sea. Check out the site and some very cool pics."

Comments

Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?

[Negadin]

From the page: "Before our cruise, these were the only two records of this rare fish in the world. Its rarity lead to it being formally recognised as threatened. In one short trawl at around 90 m deep near Ball's Pyramid, we collected three specimens and excellent fresh photographs taken by Kerryn Parkinson."

With only two records of a fish in existance, you then "collect" three specimens to keep?

What happens if you never see them again?

Re:Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?

[l810c]

There are lots of 'rare' fish in the deep ocean. I don't think they are endangered, just hard to find in such an inhospitable place.

Re:Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?

[Azghoul]

You do have a point. However, if there were only 5 or 10 on the planet, they weren't long for this earth anyway. Gene pool and all that...

Re:Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?

[Mantrid]

I don't think there's much of a problem - during random trawling they pulled up 3, given the size of the ocean, and the minute percentages actually checked, odds are there's tons of those buggers down there. And if we did remove the last three, well the species didn't have much hope anyways! It's not like they set out to find three endangered fish and pull them to the surface.

And I'm afraid that being pulled to the surface is a one-way trip. So once they were discovered there wasn't much to be done.

Re:Collecting specimins of ultra - rare fish?

[Becquerel]

It doesn't take much stats knowledge to work out that if you have say...

3 trips on which you might expect to find the things

A volume of sea in which they might exist of several 1000 km^3

And a net that can trawl 100 m^3 with big holes in it

That the probability of knowing anything about the species can be calculated to be ... Jack all.

It's daft to put it on the endangerd species list, because you haven't got a clue whether it is or not.

Re:A very important question remains...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, how do they taste, and if they taste good, how long before some fruit gets the idea to market these as a 'delicacy' and charge a shitload for them only to wipe out the species in a few decades?

Old

[tsa]

I think one of the reasons why these creatures look so weird is that they may have had the most time of every type of creature to evolve. The deep sea is not affected by ice ages and warm periods that have a large influence on the surface of the planet, so the enviromnent in which these creatures evolved may have been virtually undisturbed for many millions of years.

Re:Old

[tiled_rainbows]

My first reaction to your comment was to post something saying how you were totally wrong, but then I read it again, and it's an interesting point.

Are you saying that this environment has existed in its curent state for so long that the species living in it have had more time to adapt to more and more specialised niches within it?

Whereas on land, where you get ice ages, meteorite strikes, etc, every so often, species have to adapt quickly, so therefore, in the long run, the less specialised species are at an advantage?

If you were saying that, then I agree with you.

Re:Old

[NoData]

1) If you subscribe to most modern accounts of biogenesis, there was likely a single source for the origin of life (or at least the life from which every living thing today evolved). So, every living thing has had just as much time to evolve as every other.

2) If by "longest time" you mean time in a constant environment, please see all the other posts in this thread on how land ecology impacts deep sea ecology. Furthermore, keep in mind the earth's tectonics which are particularly violent in the Pacific. Volcanic activity has tremendous impact on deep sea life.

Things evolve to adapt to their (ever-changing) enviornments. These creatures' environments are very unlike ours. It has nothing to do with time on earth or environmental stability.

Dude...that's just crazy.

[jvmatthe]

Read up on fishes here: http://www.oceans.gov.au/norfanz/CreatureFeature.h tm

Especially the last one, known as the Jewel Squid. This just boggles my mind. And I quote:

The common name comes from the scattering of small iridescent spots over the undersides of the body, head and arms. These are tiny directional light organs like tiny car headlights. When the squid is hanging at a 45 angle, all the light organs aim down and produce just enough light to cancel out the silhouette of the squid against the weak light from the surface above. They can even adjust the lights for different depths or time of day.

It's almost difficult to believe that such a creature exists, much less was the product of random gene bit-flips over millions of years. Not that evolution isn't a reasonable theory (one which I happen to believe) but this is one of those crazy outcomes that seems so difficult to accept.

underwater habitats

[TWX]

It really surprises me how many people think of the world's water simply as "The Ocean", like it's one homogeneous thing that has the same contents everywhere. I'd expect that it would be even more varied than surface life, since different pressures, temperatures, currents, light levels, seafloor materials, salinity, and other fluid contents would vary greatly from location to location, and since depth allows for many ranges of habitats (and life forms can float at a certain depth easier than they can equivalently in air) we'd have more to look at than we could possibly ever figure out entirely. I'd think that we'd be tripping over new life forms every time we looked anywhere intently or anywhere we hadn't gone before.

Re:Haven't we come a long way!

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't generally see "nice" photos that far down. It's dark (and flash would only help so much), and I could be wrong (this is /. after all), but from what I recall from a documentary on deep sea, there was a bunch of stuff floating around near the bottom making it rather hard to produce good shots. Of course, this could have been limited to that particular area, but I don't think so.

Re:Haven't we come a long way!

[DNS-and-BIND]

You do sound like an out-of-touch tree hugger. How do you propose to keep these creatures alive, seeing that nothing is known about their diet, habitat, etc? None of this matters, of course...just shout out a trite slogan and go back to reading "New Republic".

Re:The Sea is one scary place

[Blitzshlag]

Nothing like big fish stories from a guy you used to know from Guam as guidelines for dictating the way you live your life.

Is anyone else afraid?

[aliens]

I recently saw in Popular Science I believe scientists who were going to use computer simulations to show people what the ocean looked like off of San Fran 100 years ago versus today (100 is what I remember). Just one tiny picture was all I needed to see.

Overfishing is a serious problem. I don't think people really understand how few of the popular fish are left out there.

Are we going to end up harvesting plankton a la SOylent Green?

It's not a question of wether Nature can bounce back, she can, and rather quickly, but the fishing has to stop for a bit. Unfortunately shortsighted people will continue to push for more fishing lanes.

The flip side of this is that fishermen have to eat and survive too. It's not as simple as telling them they can just up and get a job in an office.

So my question is, before I goto google for a bit, does anyone have any links to helpful sources for the preservation of our Oceans? It has to be done, and there has to be some way of keeping the fishermen paid. Does it require government subsidies? Perhaps, they'll step in way before a company offers to pay fishermen to stop fishing.