AFTER SPENDING A month on the Indian Ocean, the CSIRO research vessel RV Investigator returned to Fremantle Harbour just before Christmas last year, with some of the strangest creatures on board that have ever been found off Western Australia’s coast.
Safe below deck were carefully preserved specimens of a blind, fuchsia-pink, 50cm-long scampi; dark-purple sea urchins that sparkled with iridescent blue light; and translucent, white-fleshed squid exquisitely studded with multi-coloured shining “jewels”. There were bizarre tiny sponges, just centimetres long, that grew 2m-long rods of silica; dumbo octopuses that, as their common name suggests, soared mid-water like flying characters from a Disney animation; carnivorous glass scallops; swimming purple sea cucumbers the size of footballs and others that looked like they were wearing shaggy lion’s manes; bug-eyed, deep-dwelling, bright red prawns; and batfish, goosefish, and tripod fish, many of which were festooned with huge alienesque parasites.
Also on board were 35 exhausted researchers and 20 crew, who’d spent the previous 31 days together in close quarters working around the clock on 12-hour shifts. They were documenting as much biodiversity as they could, from 50m down to 5000m, in Gascoyne Australian Marine Park, one of the newer and larger parks. Supported by a federal Our Marine Parks grant, the investigation – a joint operation between CSIRO and the WA Museum, with scientists also from the Tasmanian Museum
