We're part of a research team from NIWA,
working with scientists from the
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and GNS Science
up here on the Kermadec Ridge.
This is an area northeast of New Zealand
The really important and interesting thing about it
is that it's formed of a line of underwater volcanoes
the animal life we are researching is several kilometers deep,
so we can't go down there with normal means,
we can't scuba dive, for example, down to that depth.
So we use two different types of sampling technique.
The first uses a camera in a towed frame
which we keep three or four meters off the seafloor
and tow along the flanks and into the craters of these volcanoes.
The camera frame has both video and still photographic capability
There's no light at the depth we're operating,
so therefore the the cameras have to take their own lights
under the water as well.
You'll see in the middle of some of these frames,
two red dots which are laser dots, they're 20 centimeters apart
which gives us the ability to tell how large the animals are.
Life down there is quite variable,
we have in some of these shots corals, sponges
crinoids or sea lilies as they are often called.
These are found widely around New Zealand.
They're not associated with the hydrothermal vents,
they live in the normal cold water down there.
Here we can now see some hydrothermal vent fauna.
These are stalked barnacles
which are very common on some volcanoes on the Kermadec Arc.
They're like normal barnacles which you might see on the coast,
on the rocky shores around New Zealand,
but their on quite a long stalk which raises them above the seafloor
so they get away from the sediment
which moves around with the ocean currents.
You can also see swarms of shrimps.
These are associated with the slightly warmer waters
which we get around the vents where there's diffuse venting.
The temperature maybe five to ten degrees warmer
than normal seawater at those depths.
They're completely blind, they don't need eyes to see down there,
so they're using their other senses, in particular smell and feel,
to find their food and to scrape bacteria off the rocks.
As well as the invertebrates -animals without back bones,
we get a lot of fish in the area.
Here we have a nice example of a skate resting on the seafloor.
Here we see a deep sea eel, called a basketwork eel
because of the pattern on it's scales.
It scavenges on the seafloor.
The camera gives us a fantastic photos,
but often, to identify exactly what the animals are,
we have to physically catch them so we can examine them in detail.
To do that we use a sled called an epibenthic sled.
It gets lowered down to the seafloor and towed
slowly along for several hundred meters,
and then hauled up, containing a combination of rocks
and seafloor life that is living on them.
The sled comes back on to the afterdeck of Tangaroa where it is emptied,
and then the biological team come in and and sort out the animals.
The animals will come to those of us from NIWA,
and the rocks go to the GNS scientists
who are concerned with the composition and the structure
of the habitat on which the animals are living.
The catch gets separated into species, things that look the same,
get catalogued and weighed,
and the good specimens, the ones in fresh condition,
then get taken away for photographing.
Here we have a coral community
with a cup coral, stony corals which forms the matrix,
which gives an area for other animals to live, like this large carnivorous worm.
When I first see a sample that I think I want to photograph,
it's usually got to be in really good condition.
The first thing is I'll clean it up a bit so it looks nice,
and then I'll zoom in on areas of taxonomic interest
which are they keys to identifying that individual.
The environment at that depth is permanently dark,
animals that don't have eyes are restricted to their feeding apendages
which they will extend out into the current
or rummage through all the mud detritus on the seafloor,
And in some cases like these brittle stars,
they'll climb up on top of a coral and extend their arms out into the water mass
to give themselves a greater surface area to obtain their food.
They survive perfectly well in unison.
The thing that enchants me about seeing these animals that come up from the deep sea,
is that they are very similar in many regards, to the ones we see
in shallow waters in a tidal rock pool at your local beach.
But how do they live in those deep oceans?
They do survive very well, and the range in form,
the intricacies of the patterns, the colouration, is just remarkable.
For me it's a bit like a painting really, they're just beautiful,
and the diversity is just incredible.