Te Papa fish team is off Kaikoura onboard the MV Star Keys to study deep-sea fish fauna.
We have just finished our third day of sampling off Kaikoura. So far, everything goes well, and we are progressing at a good pace with our sampling. It has been difficult to have an internet connection, but now we have one.
We were expecting slime during our Kaikoura fieldwork, and we are not disappointed! Have you ever heart about hagfishes, sometimes better known as snot eels? They are fantastic animals, but most probably, you need to be a scientist (and a somewhat strange one) to state this and love them. Those fishes look very primitive but are extremely successful in their biotope. They have existed in one form or another for more than 300 million years on earth, placing them at the origin of vertebrates.
Vincent cleaning one hagfish specimen from its slime (and, yes, I am Belgian!). Te Papa.
Several specimens of hagfish interlaced. The white substance is the mucous they produce. Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
Hagfish teeth. Not difficult to understand that they are very efficient scavengers of the deep. Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
Their common name comes from the faculty they have to produce mucus which is exuded through the many pores they have on their skin (usually more than 200). This mucus combines with sea water and creates a characteristic slime. Amazingly, a single specimen can produce at least his weight of slime very quickly!
Three days at sea and we have already collected over 100 specimens. Definitely the most common species so far. Our clothing is covered with slime and we are fighting to extract them out the trap they have been caught with. But all those efforts are worth the price: they truly are an interesting group of fish to study.
Carl extracting hagfish specimen out of one fish trap. Te Papa, photograph by Vincent Zintzen.
Speak to you soon and I hope you will not have nightmares because of me…
As research scientist for the Marsden funded project on diversity of deep-sea fishes of New Zealand, I have to analyse hundreds of hours of video footage taken during our surveys. Sometimes, amazing creatures appear on the screen, often when you least suspect it. Here is a shot that really surprised me. I virtually stepped back about a meter from my screen when a large sand tiger shark (Odontaspis ferox Risso, 1810) first swam towards me.
This is a large female, close to 400 cm in length. The species is a rare one, although it has been reported from scattered localities around the world. The sensors attached to our video system recorded a depth of 880 m, exactly the same depth as the deepest known record for the species. However, this species is sometimes spotted at scuba diving depths.
You will have noticed that we are using blue light to illuminate our footage. Indeed, at 880 m depth, there is no natural light or rather I should say no light that can be seen by a human eye. There is still a little bit of light that some deep sea organisms can use to find their prey. We are using blue LED systems because it appears that most fish species that we are interested in cannot see this kind of light. Because our light source is invisible to fishes, they are not disturbed and behave naturally in front of the camera, making our observations more accurate.
More amazing species from the deep to come later! Right now, I have started to process videos from recent fieldwork around Great Barrier Island and Three Kings Islands. In the meantime, you can learn more about our project by visiting the Te Papa Fish Team website.
Te Papa scientists recovering a video unit sent underwater to film deep-sea fish life. Note the bait bag at the front which is used to attract the fish towards the camera and the blue light at the top of the frame.
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