40 scientists from seven different nations departed on The Investigator in May to investigate a region of the planet that had never been seen before: the icy, black depths 14,000 feet below the surface of the ocean.
Dr. Tim O’Hara, the mission’s principal scientist, remarked before the ship sailed out, “The abyss is the largest and deepest habitat on the planet, covering half of the world’s oceans and one third of Australia’s territory, but it remains the most unexplored environment on Earth.” Although we know that abyssal animals have existed for at least 40 million years, only a small number of samples had previously been taken from Australia’s abyss.
Now that the team has returned after a month, you might mistakenly believe that they traveled by rocket ship rather than boat based on their findings.
Dinner plate-sized sea spiders, a fish without a face, blazing sea stars, fire-red horned shrimp, hermaphrodite lizard fish, a herd of sea pigs, and fish with photosensitive plates on its head are among the creatures they have on hand.
A third of their catches had never before been observed by humans.
“It’s really a voyage of discovery,” O’Hara added. “Yes, you can still do it in the 21st century, which is sort of incredible.
