The latest Oceana expedition, in collaboration with the Biodiversity Foundation, has found a dozen hitherto unknown species in the waters around the Canary Islands.

According to a press release by Oceana, they have found new sponges, white and black ball coral, new types of catfish and other species about which there is very little known, like deep water monkfish, scorpion fish, fan corals, lollipop sponges and flycatcher anemones.

The findings are the results of the first month of the Oceana Ranger's fifth annual expedition to study the seamounts of the Canary Islands.  A team of professional divers are photographing and filming the areas up to 40 metres deep. An underwater robot being used to film down to 500 metres deep, transmitting the images to the ship in real time for species identification.

Ricardo Aguilar, Director of Research at Oceana Europe, explains, “Most of the Canary Islands seabeds remain unexplored since the continental shelf is small and quickly drops down to 3,000 metres. This makes it complicated to know their state of conservation or identify areas of key importance in terms of marine ecology."

So far the crew of the 'Oceana Ranger' has made about 40 dives around six of the seven islands (Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Tenerife, La Gomera and La Palma) and has confirmed that next month they will begin diving around El Hierro as well as going back to the rest of the islands.

Another of Oceana's objectives is to record the different species of sharks and rays around the islands, as their numbers have suddenly dropped sharply.

So far, they have recorded five different species of shark (hammerhead, pelagic thresher, mako, school and angel shark) and five species of ray (including the black stingray, yellow stingray, butterfly ray and eagle ray).