The giant Australian cuttlefish (Sepia apama) is the largest cuttlefish in the world, reaching up to half a metre in total length and weighing in at around 11kg. Solitary animals, they are found all along the coastline of the southern half of Australia—from Central Queensland on the eastern coast, right around the bottom of the continent and up to Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia.
While studying reef sharks in Tahiti, I became fascinated by the behavior of the remoras accompanying them. They were fish of the <i>Echeneidae</i> family, and ranged in size from a few centimeters to about 50cm long. They were pretty silver fish with widened heads, and often a black racing stripe.
The newly protected wrecks are HMT Arfon, Submarine U-8 and HM Submarine A3.
Researchers from the Smithsonian’s Deep Reef Observation Project (DROP) have discovered a new scorpionfish species off the Caribbean island of Curaçao. Inhabiting depths between 95 m and 160 metres, it is the deepest-living member of its genus found in the western Atlantic Ocean. “The 50-300 m tropical ocean zone is poorly studied -- too deep for conventional SCUBA and too shallow to be of much interest to really deep-diving submersibles,” said DROP lead scientist Dr. Carole C. Baldwin.
