Day 6: last stations off the Otago Peninsula sampled. We are ready to move towards the Auckland Islands.
Remarkably calm conditions off the Otago Peninunsula allowed us to sample all the stations of our fish diversity survey in a short period of time.
We have been blessed with good weather conditions for the last six days which allowed us to complete quickly our diversity survey between 50m and 1200m depth off the Otago Peninsula. We have deployed 50 videos units, capturing over 150 hours of footage. Twenty fish traps sampled the fish fauna over the last days as well. The fish trap highlight is the capture of a hagfish specimen which is not looking like anything we have seen so far. It is hard to tell for sure at this stage if this is a new species, but it may well be. The specimen will need careful examination and DNA analysis once we are back in Wellington to identify it with confidence.
A hagfish specimen, Eptatretus cirrhatus, producing large amount of slime when manipulated on the deck.
The team welcoming a video unit hauled back up from 1200m depth.
Tomorrow, the boat will transit to Bluff where it will have to be inspected and cleared by DoC staff before continuing towards the Auckland Islands. It is very important to respect quarantine procedure associated to a voyage in the Subantarctic Islands. The preservation of their natural state is at stake. If the weather forecast holds, we will have a window to reach the islands on Monday-Tuesday. At least 36 hours are needed to navigate between Bluff and the Auckland Islands.
I will try to continue updating you on our progress once we have reached the islands, although communication is going to be more complicated from this very remote location.
Our survey onboard the MV Tranquil Image has started after a rough transit from Wellington to Dunedin.
After a very successful day 1 deploying camera and traps in the shallow (50 and 100 m), today we have started exploring the deep canyons of the area some 25 nautical miles from the coast. The sea wasn’t the calmest this morning, but everybody seemed to enjoy the bouncy travel towards the 1200 m depth contour line. We have managed to deploy six video systems and four fish traps at depth ranging from 300 to 1200 m. Today’s highlight was surely the presence in high numbers of Owston’s dogfish (Centroscymnus owstoni) on the videos and also on the fish traps at depth 500 to 900 m. We caught a good size range from juveniles (15 cm) to adults (1.1 m) which will be very useful for future taxonomic studies. They were observed on the video feeding by taking a mouthful of sediments to find little benthic preys, expulsing the mud and sand by their gills. An unnoticed behaviour so far.
Scientists and crew prepare the deployment a fish trap to be sent in the deep canyons off Otago Peninsula
Te Papa scientist Carl Struthers holding a large specimen of Owston's dogfish just caught in a fish trap at 700 m depth
We were expecting to catch some hagfish in the area, but could not see any on the video, and none were attracted by the bait of our traps. We are hoping that the next days will bring the discovery of their presence in the area.
A hermit crab caught in the trap tries to grip onto a little fragment of probable coral
I will keep you posted on what’s going on here in a few days.
It’s only about three years I have been living in New Zealand and there is still plenty to learn about the country. But one thing I already know for sure, it’s that February is the best month in the year to enjoy good sun, low winds and warm weather. It might actually be the only one! So I am starting to think that I might be a little bit insane to plan a survey down the Sub Antarctic islands, right in the middle of February. Of course there is a very good reason to do this, but it comes at the cost of abandoning my dreams of diving warm waters this summer.
Map showing the sampling locations already achieved (green) and the two locations still to be sampled (red).
February is supposedly the best month of the year and this should also apply to the Auckland Islands where we will be studying the taxonomy, ecology and behaviour of the fish fauna in cold and deep waters. With the use of our video systems, we are going to film the never filmed before: the deep-sea fauna of those very wild and remote islands.
The Auckland Islands are located at 51°S, about 500 km south of Invercargill and are basically lost in the middle of the Ocean. The group of islands is 43 km long by 24 km wide. The first stretch of land on the West is the tip of South America, some 8000 km away. The first land on the East is actually also South America, and is not closer. This means that winds, rarely dropping under 60 km/h, and sea state can be remarkably unfriendly in the Auckland Islands, with no protection from land for thousands of kilometres. Now you start understanding why I am ready to give up on some mainland New Zealand warmth, in the hope of having acceptable conditions to deploy our video systems.
The MV Tranquil Image is being loaded with scientific gear in Tauranga
Working deck of the MV Tranquil Image crowded with all the scientific equipment used to study fish diversity and behaviour.
A video unit being hauled back after having filmed the fish fauna off the Kermadec Islands at 1200m depth (May 2011).
During this survey, we will also stop by around the Otago Peninsula to do similar work. We will sample the deep canyons up to 1200 m, learning more about fish diversity and behaviour in the area.
In one day, our boat the MV Tranquil Image will be in Wellington and we will be departing.
Recently, I published with my colleagues from Te Papa Fish Team and Massey University some interesting findings about a fantastic group of species: hagfishes. Those primitive deep-sea fishes repulse any predator attack using their slime. I present examples of how hagfish stop the attack from shark several times their sizes. And it even looked easy… The paper also documents a first ever observed predating behaviour of hagfishes in the wild. We thought they were only eating dead or dying animals, but now we know that they can also hunt for preys. Combining this with the fact that hagfish have existed on Earth, almost unchanged, for 300 millions years and are the ancestors of all vertebrates, they are quite impressive animals! You can download the open-access paper here.
Those videos got National Geographic attention and were published on their website where you can find other examples of amazing animal behaviours. It is well worth having a look at. Follow this link to the National Geographic video.
The seal shark, Dalatias licha, attacking the common hagfish, Eptatretus cirrhatus
In the meantime, our team is getting ready for another expedition. In about ten days, we are heading down South for almost one month of intensive sampling. This time, we will study fish biology and behaviours off the Otago Peninsula and around the Auckland Islands which are part of the Sub Antarctic islands. This is an amazingly wild place to work on! I will post in the coming days more information about this exciting survey.
Not many of you will believe that hagfish, also called snot-eels, are fascinating creatures, but they truly are. You will only be able to believe me after reading this post. I still persist saying that I am not falling in love with them but some of my colleagues start worrying about my desire to always know more on their behaviour. Another step in this direction, I just published with colleagues from Te Papa, Massey University and the University of Western Australia a paper describing new extraordinary behaviours of my current favourites.
Hagfish teeth. Hagfish are equipped with four rows of keratinous teeth that they can use to grasp and bite flesh from dead animals or live prey.
Hagfish are deep-sea primitive fishes which have been living on Earth for at least 300 millions years, almost unchanged. They are like living fossils and scientists wonder how it is possible that they could survive for such a long time on Earth. To give you an idea of how long 300 millions years is, keep in mind that the dinosaurs appeared on Earth about 230 millions years and went extinct about 65 millions ago. With this research, we reveal a few more clues on what make hagfishes so special.
Hagfish were thought to fulfil primarily the ecological niche of scavengers in the deep ocean, i.e. we thought they were feeding on dead animals only. Reviewing video footage taken in New Zealand waters, we now know that they are also able to hunt for live preys such as fishes. During a video deployment off Great Barrier Island at 97 m depth, one hagfish species was successfully observed predating on a red bandfish.
But there is more. After carefully reviewing over 1000 hours of underwater video footage, I realized that not a single shark or other large fish could bite and feed on hagfish. Hagfish versus sharks and co: 1-0! What happens is that every time a large fish tries to attack, the hagfish produce large amount of slime at incredible speed. This slime then clogs the gills of those would-be predators which start choking, unable to breathe. Amazingly, not a single attack resulted in successful predation! This is an extremely effective defence mechanism, totally unique.
The paper describing those two newly observed behaviours can be downloaded here from the journal Scientific Reports.
Our video deployments are revealing day after day a bit more of the particular fish fauna of the Raoul Island. The most remarkable feature we observe is the large amount of sharks. And to be honest, I would not like them to come to close during a dive. Bronze whalers and galapagos sharks are here very common. It is not surprising to find them in high abundance since the area is protected and have consequently not been fished.
Deployment of a video unit
The survey is progressing well and we hope having completed our deployments in about 2-3 days. The weather is decent, without being exceptional. We had to work every day in 2-3m swells which did not cause us too much problems.
We finally arrived at Raoul Island in the morning after a very rough night due to nasty weather. We basically jumped from our bed, every 30 seconds following a big swell, discovering the joy of gravity at the same time. It can be funny, for a moment, and if you do not touch too much the ceiling…. The weather stayed bad until we arrived at Raoul where everyone was happy to find shelter and finally get some food in our disturbed stomach.
Luckily after that, the sky opened and let us discover the beauty of Raoul Island. We found the time to make two video and two trap samples. The clarity of the water is amazing, with a depth of field of more than 15m at 100m depth.
Beautiful sunlight on the south-western Denham Bay.
Tomorrow, we will have a full day working. We will be able to study the deep-sea fish fauna of the Kermadec Islands.
A Te Papa expedition, in collaboration with Massey University, is going to study the fish fauna of the Kermadec Islands, some 1000km North of mainland New Zealand.
We left Tauranga aboard the MV Tranquil Image yesterday. Loading all the gear on the deck was a bit more of a challenge than usual because of the extra fuel that we had to take for this long trip going far offshore. It is now just over 24 hours that we are steaming non-stop to the North. We will need another 36 hours at least to reach our destination, Raoul Island.
Loading up the Tranquil Image with gear. More than 10km of rope for deployments of video units and fish traps are necessary.
The night was, let’s say interesting, since the sea became a little bit rougher when it was time to get a rest. I think that like everybody else aboard, I only half-slept.
But in two days, we will be able to start our sampling campaign in one of the most amazing place on earth. It is enough to keep us awake. My shipmates Charlie, Carl, Adam and Tom are all looking forward to discover this untouched ground.
The Kermadec Islands’ are the most isolated piece of rock that New Zealand has, some 1,000km North of Tauranga, right in the middle of very deep oceans. The isolation, recent geological origin and predominantly subtropical marine flora and fauna make them unique both nationally and internationally. I often imagine the Kermadec as one of the last untouched area on the planet.
Many species found at the Kermadecs do not occur on mainland New Zealand. The limited sampling to date has discovered that almost every major taxonomic group studied so far, with the exception of the algae and corals, has one or more species endemic to the islands.
On Wednesday, I am leaving with a team of Te Papa scientists to work on the fish fauna of this fantastic location. It’s going to be a three long days trip steaming to Raoul Island, the main island of the Kermadec. Then, we will mostly do video and collecting work, deploying systems from the shallow and colourful 50m depth zone, to the dark deep-sea waters beyond 1500m where no light penetrates. It is a very exciting time and I expect lots of new discoveries out of this survey. Hopefully, I will be able to share them with you with the help of satellite communication. Thank you technology!
More to come later…
Vincent
Our Boat heavily loaded with gear during our previous survey off Kaikoura.
Te Papa fish team is off Kaikoura onboard the MV Star Keys to study deep-sea fish fauna.
We are blessed with good weather since Wednesday which allows us to being close to the minimum number of samples we have to achieve. That’ excellent news!
I though I would show you some pictures aboard the Star Keys. You will see the Kaikoura range is superb in the background.
Early in the morning aboard the Star Keys, fully loaded with scientific gear (underwater video systems, fish traps and ropes). Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
The Kaikoura range in the background.
Deep-sea shark caught with the fish traps. Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
Fish trap being retrieved after deployment at 700m depth. Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
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