Explorers find hundreds of undescribed corals, other species on familiar Australian reefs

First systematic inventory of soft corals, other animals creates indispensable baseline on famous reefs

One of hundreds of soft corals found on CReefs expedition, 2008. Click here for more information.

Hundreds of new kinds of animal species surprised international researchers systematically exploring waters off two islands on the Great Barrier Reef and a reef off northwestern Australia -- waters long familiar to divers.

The expeditions, affiliated with the global Census of Marine Life, help mark the International Year of the Reef and included the first systematic scientific inventory of spectacular soft corals, named octocorals for the eight tentacles that fringe each polyp.

The explorers today released some initial results and stunning images from their landmark four-year effort to record the diversity of life in and around Australia's renowned reefs.

Discoveries at Lizard and Heron Islands (part of the Great Barrier Reef), and Ningaloo Reef in northwestern Australia, included:

• About 300 soft coral species, up to half of them thought to be new to science;

• Dozens of small crustacean species -- and potentially one or more families of species – likewise thought unknown to science;

• A rarely sampled amphipod of the Maxillipiidae family, featuring a bizarre whip-like back leg about three times the size of its body. Only a few species are recorded worldwide;

• New species of tanaid crustaceans, shrimp-like animals, some with claws longer than their bodies;

• The beautiful, rare Cassiopeia jellyfish, photographed upside down on the ocean floor, tentacles waving in the water column -- a posture that enables symbiotic algae living in its tentacles to capture sunlight for photosynthesis;

• Scores of tiny amphipod crustaceans – insects of the marine world – of which an estimated 40 to 60% will be formally described for the first time.

As well, the researchers deployed new methods designed to help standardize measurement of the health, diversity and biological makeup of coral reefs worldwide and enhance comparisons.