Overview
Recent collections (2001, 2002) in deep water on hydrothermal vents in northern New Zealand’s Kermadec arc have uncovered two new fish species living abundantly in this unique and previously poorly sampled habitat. The two authors Anderson (South Africa) and Munroe (USA) are specialists collaborating with the “Biosystematics of NZ EEZ Fishes” project, reviewing the eelpouts and tongue soles respectively and contributing family accounts to the 2012 guidebook.
Hydrothermal vent faunas, first discovered in 1977, are generally very deep, remote and difficult to sample. These two species, an eelpout endemic to one seamount and a tongue sole widespread but patchy in the West Pacific, are the first to be collected and described from hydrothermal sites within New Zealand’s EEZ.