The review of the handfishes brings the family to 14 known species – six found only in Tasmania and one known from only one specimen possibly collected in Tasmania by early European explorers, yet not recorded since. It also deepens concerns about declining populations of some handfishes. “Handfishes are small, often strikingly patterned or colourful, sedentary fish that tend to ‘walk’ on the seabed on hand-like fins, rather than swim. Fifty million-years ago, they ‘walked’ the world’s oceans, but now they exist only off eastern and southern Australia,“ Mr Gledhill says.

Extremely vulnerable

Dr Last says handfishes are extremely vulnerable to environmental change – introduced species, pollution, siltation, fishing, sea-temperature rise and coastal development – due to their scarcity, patchy distribution, life history strategy, low breeding rates and poor dispersal ability. Mr Gledhill says the handfishes have proven difficult to classify due to their rarity and a lack of specimens. One of the newly named species, the Pink Handfish, is known from only four specimens and was last recorded off the Tasman Peninsula in 1999. The Pink Handfish will feature in a photographic exhibition of Australia’s marine biodiversity that opens today (21 May) at Questacon in Canberra. The Spotted Handfish is listed as endangered under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and the Red Handfish and Ziebell’s Handfish are listed as vulnerable.