10/05/2026
A big shout out to Aaryan Sharma for completion of a 77-page booklet on the marine invertebrate “cryptofauna” that were recovered from the St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area using Autonomous Reef Monitoring Structures by Aaryan, Tim Rawlings, and Bruce Hatcher. This booklet includes records of 57 species, spanning 7 phyla: Cnidaria, Platyhelminthes, Bryozoa, Mollusca, Annelida, Arthropoda, and Echinodermata. Credit is also due to BSc Biol (Hons) student, Jaskaran Singh, who painstakingly identified the bryozoans for this project as part of his honours research.
What are cryptofauna? Cryptofauna are those small and inconspicuous organisms that live on the seafloor, often in cracks and crevices, or under cobbles and boulders, and are not typically recorded using common benthic monitoring procedures. Their results provide an insight into those species present on Scatarie Bank, a hard rock, shallow-water bank within the St. Anns Bank Marine Protected Area, and will help in efforts to characterize and monitor habitats within the MPA through time.
Way to go team! 👏
