CSIRO researchers spot narrowbody handfish for first time in 25 years
The CSIRO have spotted what it says is ‘a needle in a haystack’, a creature so rare, no one’s seen it in 25 years. See the pictures.
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An elusive species of handfish, not seen for more than 25 years, has been captured by a special deep sea camera during a research voyage in southeast Australian waters.
It’s a rare and surprising discovery for researchers at the CSIRO who recently returned from a five-week voyage on board the RV Investigator, but not all of the findings from the journey were positive.
Chief scientist on the voyage, Rich Little, said researchers set out to make comparisons of deep-sea ecosystems, last surveyed 25 years ago.
The purpose was to collect data to be used in assessing the effect of climate change on marine parks and fisheries.
“There’s been a lot of scientific anecdotal evidence that the ecosystem in southeast Australia has changed in the past 30 years, resulting in climate change,” Dr Little said.
“We went out to determine if it has changed, and answer some questions of why.”
The crew began sampling around Maria Island, continuing to survey as far north as Merimbula.
“We sampled at depths between 100 and 500 metres off the continental shelf, and we used a range of sampling methods including fishing and ... dragging a camera on the bottom at night,” Dr Little said.
“We saw a lot more small pelagic fish like mackerel, a lot of fish that would essentially be big fish, and a lot of predators that would be feeding on them including seals and some of the top order predators.
“We saw more signs of human utilisation than we had expected – we saw bricks, we saw milk crates, we saw signs of fishing.”
The researchers found things had changed, and the numbers of certain fish species they hoped would repopulate had not improved.
“Some of the species we were a little bit worried about we continue to be worried about … they hadn’t responded in terms of the management as we’d expected, things like red fish and blue warehou,” he said.
“The management processes to rebuild populations are not working, the hypothesis is it’s fishing or climate, or a combination of both.”
But an unexpected positive finding was a rare species of handfish.
“We would put our cameras down at night-time and collect stills and video data,”
research technician Carlie Devine said.
“In one of the stills, one of our colleagues spotted the handfish … It was very surprising to see.
“This particular one we think we saw is a narrowbody handfish, we last saw it in 1986 and then again in 1996, that was off the south coast of Victoria.
“This handfish we found a little deeper at 292m and 100km away from where it was last sighted … it was found off the northeast coast of Flinders Island.”
The image isn’t enough to confirm the species.
“It looks similar, it has a pale pink colour with no markings on it, but it was a lot bigger,” she said.
“They’re very difficult to find, we will keep trying, maybe on another voyage.
“It is significant, it’s so rare to see. It’s a win for science to see something like this and to know it’s still around after 26 years from first sighting.”
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Originally published as CSIRO researchers spot narrowbody handfish for first time in 25 years
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