Tony Koslow, a deep-sea ecologist with Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), was smitten by a wisp of an animal called a sea lily. Once thought to have been largely extinct since the Mesozoic, when dinosaurs lived, these living fossils wave their branches like tiny palm fronds in the water to catch food, but, like some cartoon character, can also walk about.

Then there are the sea spiders. These are basically bundles of legs that, on the Tasmanian seamounts, are gargantuan—some growing to about a foot (0.3 meter) across.

Each saltwater menagerie also includes a host of deepwater corals that thrive even in the massive pressures at the bases of some of the seamounts, which can be as deep as a mile (1.6 kilometers) underwater.

Because many of the seamount species are likely found nowhere else on the planet, Koslow says they are in desperate need of protection from commercial fishers, who decimate some seamounts while trawling. New Zealand and Australia have now established permanent protection for a portion of the seamounts explored, which Koslow applauds.

“At one time we thought that deep water was well and truly out of reach of mankind,” says Koslow, “but it isn’t any longer, and so it’s important to really know what’s there and how it works.” That could take some time, given that there are roughly 30,000 seamounts and that all but a handful are still waiting for first descents.

—Mark Schrope

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