A large bamboo coral from the Huon Marine Park (1146 m depth). In this region these corals can grow to at least 2 metres tall and live for at least 370 years.
Patience seamount is the only seamount off temperate Australia where the abundant basketwork eel spawns (1092 metres depth). The eels co-exist there with schools of orange roughy.
Seamounts provide hard, elevated and current-swept habitats that create a hotspot of species diversity and abundance. Here sea stars, feather stars, soft corals, glass sponges and sea urchins live among a thicket of stony corals and sea whips (1106 metres depth).
Deposits of Tasmania's mineral emblem, Crocoite, on a seamount peak adjacent to the Huon Marine Park (1202 metres depth). This rare lead-chromate crystal is known only from terrestrial mines, prominently in western Tasmania.
An Eastern Rock Lobster (Sagmariasus verreauxi) foraging on a deep reef within the Huon Marine Park. Note the white coloration on the lobster, a typical feature of lobsters on deep shelf reefs in Tasmanian coastal waters. It is only when lobsters forage in shallower water that they attain their typical red colouration, a result of the higher abundance of carotinoid pigments in the marco- and encrusting algal assemblages which upon consumption will accumulate in the lobster's exoskeleton. Lobsters are regularly seen in AUV imagery from the Huon Marine Park.
An orange roughy swims across a region where bottom trawling has removed the benthos, leaving behind a flat 2D surface of coral rubble (1061 metres depth). Species composition differs and faunal density is higher in areas where 3D habitats are formed by structural corals.
A pristine benthic coral community showing stony and soft corals, with numerous sea urchins and feather stars living on and in a matrix of old stony coral matrix (1202 metres depth). These fauna are typical of seamount habitats in never-trawled regions of the Huon Marine Park.
A pristine benthic coral community dominated by Solenosmilia variabilis (1021 metre depth). This coral forms large areas of reef habitat on the deep-sea seamounts in the Huon Marine Park which provides food, habitat and shelter to a diverse range of marine species.
A seascape impacted by bottom-trawling where only relatively small, flexible and more resilient corals remain (1118 metres depth). Slow coral growth rates means recovery of these ecosystems is expected to be protracted; little change was observed over a decade during a CSIRO study.