Carnivorous Sea Squirt Among New Finds in Australian Waters

On Sunday, a U.S.-Australian team of scientists announced that they had uncovered new marine animals during their research of unexplored Australian waters. Among these were a carnivorous sea squirt and a carnivorous anemone.

The team spent a month in the waters off the coast of Tasmania and found new species and indications that global warming was having an effect on the marine life. Lead Researcher Ron Thresher told AFP, "Our sampling documented the deepest known Australian fauna, including a bizarre carnivorous sea squirt, sea spiders and giant sponges, and previously unknown marine communities dominated by gooseneck barnacles and millions of round, purple-spotted sea anemones."

Also found were fossil coral fields dating back more than 10,000 years, as well as modern-day deep-water coral reefs. However, Thresher said that there is strong evidence that this newer reef system is dying "with most reef-forming coral deeper than 1,300 metres newly dead."

The car-sized submersible robot named Jason allowed the team to drop down 2.48 miles below the sea surface (13,200 feet) to the rift in the earth's crust known as the Tasman Fracture Zone.

Researcher Adam Subhas kept a blog during the cruise and excitedly posted about the event that led to so many previously undiscovered treasures. According to Subhas, the sea floor was occupied "mostly by barnacles, some octocorals and gorgonians, and invertebrates like prawns/shrimp, sea pens, and sea cucumbers."

"We did see a carnivorous sea squirt though...basically an underwater Venus fly trap - but MUCH bigger!. . .The geology was fascinating too - the sediment was incredibly fine and lightly packed; it made me think of powder snow."

The carnivorous sea squirt is also known as an ascidian and stands at 50 centimeters tall on the sea floor at a depth of 4,000 meters. A bizarre creature, the sea squirt looks like an odd piece of glass stuck into the sandy sea floor. Unlike other sea squirts, which filter feed, this species traps small fish and other creatures in its funnel-like front section if they touch it as they swim past.

Other discoveries made by the team were a carnivorous anemone and an eerie hermit crab with a shell made out of a symbiotic anemone. According to Subhas, "the Anemone builds itself around the crab to serve as a shell, and in return gets to move around and feed on the hermit crab's catch."

At 3500 meters were millions of sea anemones. According to Dr. Thresher,

"They had never been described before. They had never even been observed before."

The expedition was the first of its kind to observe life forms at such great depths in Australia's oceans.

Scientists Find New Creatures of Australian Deep, AFP

Adam Subhas, Research Cruise Blog

Weird Finds in Ultra-Deep Australian Seas, The Sydney Morning Herald