We’re back under water! We’re back under water!

Our expedition team is back from the Three Kings Islands and ready to answer your questions about what they found and to show you some of the specimens they collected to help build their understanding of the marine environment. The blog has been a fantastic chance to follow their discoveries but now you can meet them face to face and talk to them about their preliminary findings about marine life in the Three Kings. In the few days since the team got back on dry land they've already identified that one of the fish they found is likely to be a new species. So who knows what tomorrow will bring. You can meet four of the team - including University of Queensland PhD student Libby Liggins and one of the expedition's photographers Richard Robinson - tomorrow at 11am at the Auckland Museum. There are some more details of the session below and we've also got some more underwater footagREAD MORE...

There were two other boats up here today – both of them are charter boats that have brought people up here to go fishing. There’s still quite a big swell out at sea but we are okay in the shelter of South East Bay. There are at least two new fish records for the Three Kings Islands from this morning’s dive so Tom is very happy, and the list of fish we have recorded here just gets longer and longer.

We were diving in South East Bay at Great Island today. It was interesting in terms of seaweed cover. It wasn’t all Sargassum, like it was over at the Princes group, but instead there was lots of Ecklonia, which we saw lots of at the Cavalli islands on our shake-down dive.

There was still some Sargassum, and still lots of other interesting seaweeds growing on the stems of the Ecklonia. As well as the new fish records for the Kings that kept the fish team very happy there was also one little mystery fish that has Tom and Malcolm stumped.

Latest thought is it is a kind of cusk eel, but they don’t have enough references on board to tell us any more at this stage. So, probably a new record for the Three Kings but could be much more exciting than that …

We couldn’t leave you without a couple of photos for the day … Malcom snapped this stalked ascidian which is the thing that looks like a bunch of flowers in the Catton’s Cave video.

A couple of you wanted to know what an ascidian actually was – they are also known as “sea squirts” and they are filter feeding marine animals that usually don’t move but are fixed in one position. They come in myriad shapes and sizes so they can look quite different from one another.

And now to a marine animal that doesn’t stay in one spot. We’ve seen a few short-tailed stingrays on the trip so far, and this one caught Malcolm by surprise as it cruised up beside him.