В подводной долине у Новой Зеландии обнаружены сотни новых видов, включая неизвестного ранее светящегося коралла

The nets came up slowly, heavy with cold and darkness. Three miles below the surface, in a stretch of ocean off New Zealand that barely anyone had studied, something had been waiting. When the crew spread the haul across the sorting tables, the scientists gathered around one specimen. Some finds you recognize at once, and this was not one of them. Everyone leaned in, and then they went very still. Nobody on board could say what it was. A trough that science had almost forgotten The expedition focused on the Bounty Trough, a deep underwater valley off the South Island. It runs for close to 500 miles through one of the loneliest corners of the Southern Ocean. Before this voyage, almost nothing was known about the animals living on that deep seafloor. The trough drops away in stages, its walls draped in cold sediment no camera had swept across. Almost no research vessel had ever dropped a net into it. The sunlight of the surface never reaches a place this deep. Down there the pressure would crush a submarine like a can. That gap in the map is hard to believe today. A team set out to explore what one researcher called largely uncharted water. They hoped for a handful of new species, and found far beyond that. Nearly 1,800 samples and a list that kept growing The three week voyage ran aboard the research vessel Tangaroa. It was the first flagship Southern Hemisphere expedition for Ocean Census, a global push to find ocean life. The team collected almost 1,800 samples from as deep as 4,800 meters down. They worked along the full 800 kilometer length of the trough. Scientists from New Zealand worked alongside experts from the UK and Australia. Back on deck, the pile of unfamiliar animals only grew. Every net that came up added more names to the ledger. According to the expedition, about 100 of the species look new to science. Fish, squid, mollusks, and corals all turned up that no one had cataloged. And a few of the fish carried a rare kind of surprise. Why a new fish makes scientists nervous Most deep sea expeditions turn up invertebrates, the worms, corals, and soft bodied drifters. Science has barely begun to catalog them, with hundreds of thousands still unknown. A brand new fish is a different and much rarer thing. A fish is a vertebrate, built on the same body plan as we are. So a new one hints at whole lineages science has never sampled. Vertebrates are the branch of life that includes birds, mammals, and us. Finding a fresh twig on that branch is a genuine event. Among the haul were eelpouts, an ancient family built for cold and crushing pressure. Some carried markings and proportions that placed them outside any known species. And they were not even the strangest thing in the net. The creature that baffled every expert One specimen was so unusual it stopped every scientist on the ship. It was a small, glowing, star shaped creature resting on the dark seabed. The team first guessed it was a sea star, then a soft coral. The animal did not match any drawer in the world’s museums. It turned out to be neither in any familiar sense. Researchers now think it is a new species of coral, and possibly a new genus entirely. According to one account, a scientist called it possibly “a whole new group” of animals. If that holds, it would be a significant find for the deep sea. It would sit on a corner of the tree of life that no one had drawn. That is the kind of blank space scientists almost never get to fill. For now the creature rests in a jar, waiting for the work to confirm it. What the deep is telling us Scientists say the number 100 is almost certainly an undercount. Many samples still sit in cold storage, waiting for specialists to name them. Reading the tiny difference in a fin or a tentacle can take years of work. Each fresh name takes patient study under a microscope. Deep sea habitats face growing pressure from mining plans and warming, shifting water. Those forces move faster than science can catalog what is down there. The voyage was meant as a beginning, not an ending. The same wonder keeps surfacing elsewhere, from clever octopuses to a NASA find on distant ocean moons. Ocean Census set out to name more than 100,000 new marine species. The Bounty Trough alone hints that the goal is not as bold as it sounds. Somewhere in that cold black water, something is still moving.