A rock bottom fauna from 80 fathoms off Banks Peninsula

By 1951, apart from the systematic accounts of various groups, based on the results of expeditions that have visited New Zealand waters, the deep water faun of the New Zealand seas was very imperfectly known. Some of the molluscan faunas were reasonably well known but there was no account of the complete fauna from any one locality. In 1951, Dr. G. A. Knox had the good fortune to examine a large sandstone block trawled from 80 fathoms (145 metres) off Banks Peninsula. Apart from the motile crustacea and echinoderms, a reasonably complete coverage of the rock dwelling fauna of the continental shelf of this region was recovered.
A total of 103 species was obtained from the block. Of these three species and one subspecies of mollusca and four species of polychaeta proved to be new (several sponges and bryozoan were also likely to be new. The mollusca are described by R. K. Dell and the polychaeta by G. A. Knox in a issue of the Canterbury Museum Records.
The porifera were preliminarily identified into eight species, but were not formerly identified in this dataset.