Book Description

Tropical Deep-Sea Benthos is a series dedicated to the inventory and description of the deep-sea fauna of the world, with special emphasis on their most extensive--but remote and least-explored--habitats: the Indo-West Pacific. Growing out of marine expeditions undertaken by the French National Museum of Natural History and the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement, the series continues to present many new, strange, and sometimes colorful invertebrates. The present volume presents results from recent expeditions within the New Caledonian Exclusive Economic Zone, reporting ninety-eight species (including fifty-seven new species) of corals from the Stylasteridae family and one new calcified species of hydrozoa from the family Hydractiniidae. Including numerous seamounts, submarine ridges, and small islands, New Caledonia's deep-sea benthos are ideal habitat for stylasterids, making it the most species-rich marine region in the world for this taxon.