Scientists Just Found 110+ New Species Hiding in Deep Waters Off Australia—Including a ‘Ghost Shark’

More than 110 species of fish and invertebrates previously unknown to science were lurking between 200 metres and 3 kilometres deep in Australia’s Coral Sea—and researchers believe the final count could exceed 200.

The discoveries emerged from a 35-day voyage aboard CSIRO research vessel Investigator, which departed Brisbane last October and traveled as far as Mellish Reef, about 1,000km off the Queensland coast. CSIRO is Australia’s national science agency, and the expedition was a collaboration with The Nippon Foundation-Nekton Ocean Census.

The creatures were found in the Coral Sea marine park, Australia’s largest marine protected area, spanning nearly 1 million square kilometres to the east of the Great Barrier Reef. The haul includes brittlestars, crabs, sea anemones and sponges—animals that had been living in the deep, completely unnoticed.

A shark expert’s personal finds

Dr Will White, a shark expert and the voyage’s chief scientist, said the expedition set out to learn more about the area’s deepwater biodiversity, for which there was “very limited data.”

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White personally identified four new species: a skate, a ray, a deepwater catshark and a chimaera—also known as a ghost shark.

The ray, found on the Kenn Plateau roughly halfway between Australia and New Caledonia, is a type of stingaree in the genus Urolophus. White described them as similar to stingrays. “They’ve got a relatively long tail but then they’ve got a caudal fin at the end,” he said.

The new deepwater catshark, in the genus Apristurus, is a tropical species. “They’re very dark-bodied, they’re almost flabby – truly deepwater things, very slow moving, [with] lots of little teeth,” White said.

Then there’s the chimaera — the ghost shark. It’s a type of animal related to sharks and rays with cartilaginous rather than bony skeletons. White described the creatures as having a “rat-like tail, quite a plump nose, and a big spine above the dorsal fin.” They’re also sometimes called rat fish.

Cryptic creatures that defy easy identification

Not every discovery announces itself. Dr Claire Rowe, the marine invertebrates collection manager at the Australian Museum, said many invertebrates collected on the voyage—including jellyfish—were cryptic, meaning they’re difficult to identify based on physical characteristics alone.

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Invertebrate specialists on board the Investigator photographed and took tissue samples of the newly collected animals. Scientists were conducting further genetic testing from those tissue samples to confirm which collected specimens were genuinely new to science.

“There does look like there’s some new species of anemones, which is quite exciting,” Rowe said.

Why this matters right now

Rowe stressed the urgency behind expeditions like this. “So little is known about the deep sea,” she said. “It’s such an unexplored area, and with so many threats to our ocean, such as overfishing and climate change and deep sea mining, we need to understand what’s out there before it’s lost.”

The timing is significant. The Coral Sea is almost half a degree warmer than it was 30 or 40 years ago, according to climate scientists. Sea surface temperatures there over both the last summer and calendar year have been the hottest on record.

The biggest workshops of their kind

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After the voyage, taxonomists gathered in what White believes were “likely the largest taxonomic workshops of marine animals ever undertaken in Australia” to identify the specimens collected on board.

Samples from the expedition have since been shared around the country, held in collections at CSIRO, the Australian Museum and state museums.

With more than 110 species confirmed so far and the potential for that number to climb past 200, the Coral Sea’s deepwater world is proving far richer—and far more mysterious—than anyone had documented.