Records of the Western Australian Museum 18: 135-155 (1996). 
Species composition and checklist of the demersal ichthyofauna of the 
continental slope off Western Australia (20-35°S) 
A. Williams 1 , P.R. Last 1 , M.F. Gomon 2 and J.R. Paxton 3 
'CSIRO Division of Fisheries, GPO Box 1538, Tasmania 7001, Australia 
2 Museum of Victoria, PO Box 666E, Melbourne, Victoria 3001, Australia 
’Australian Museum, 6 College Street, Sydney, New South Wales 2000, Australia 
Abstract - The first regional collection of fishes from the continental slope off 
the west coast of Australia was taken between 1989 and 1991 during 
exploratory trawling. Collections were taken from 95 trawls completed 
during an exploratory fishing survey by a research vessel at latitudinally and 
depth-stratified stations, and from 56 trawls aboard commercial vessels. The 
region trawled was between latitudes 20-35°S in depths from 200 to about 
1500 m. 
The demersal slope fish fauna in this region is highly speciose: 388 species 
from 108 families were identified and these are presented in a checklist. 
Approximately 100 of these species are recorded from Australian waters for 
the first time and many represent undescribed taxa. We present criteria 
which establish the reliability of identifications in the checklist. Overall, the 
Macrouridae are the most speciose family with 50 species; 10 or more species 
were also recorded from the Squalidae (22 species), Alepocephalidae (17), 
Ophidiidae (17), Moridae (13), Triglidae (13), Scyliorhinidae (10) and 
Scorpaenidae (10). 
The most abundant families (in numbers of individuals) in 200-600 m 
include the Acropomatidae, Trachichthyidae, Chlorophthalmidae and 
Scorpaenidae. Between 600 and 800 m, the Macrouridae, Bathyclupeidae, 
Chaunacidae and Neoscopelidae are most abundant, while the Macrouridae, 
Alepocephalidae, Oreosomatidae and Synaphobranchidae dominate depths 
below 800 m. 
INTRODUCTION 
In their recent treatment of the Australian fish 
fauna, Paxton et al. (1989) described the offshore 
waters of Western Australia as virtually 
unsampled from an ichthyological perspective. Fish 
collections had been made during an exploratory 
fishing survey by a Japanese trawler on the 
continental shelf and upper-continental slope to a 
depth of 600 m (Heald and Walker 1982). 
However, few specimens from that work are 
represented in museum collections and 
consequently species identifications cannot be 
verified. Similarly, few results from surveys 
undertaken by the Soviets in Western Australian 
waters between 1962 and 1974, (E. Nosov, TINRO, 
Vladivostok, Russia, pers. comm.) are available. 
Locality and depth of capture data in occasional 
descriptions of new species, e.g., Sazonov and 
Shcherbachev (1982) and Iwamoto and 
Shcherbachev (1991), indicated those cruises had 
fished on the western slope region. More recently, 
fish collections have been taken during exploratory 
fishing by Australian trawlers and foreign vessels 
in collaborative fishing ventures. These operations 
included a survey by the CSIRO Division of 
Fisheries' research vessel, FRV Southern Surveyor, 
based around a series of stations stratified by depth 
and latitude. This paper is based on collections of 
demersal fishes taken during these operations 
between 1989 and 1991. 
Collections of deep water fishes from the 
Australian region have expanded rapidly in recent 
years following the commercial exploitation of 
continental slope resources. Commercial fishing 
has occurred primarily on the slope region of 
southeastern Australia and the Great Australian 
Bight (GAB) where blue grenadier ( Macruronus 
novaezelandiae), gemfish ( Rexea solandri) and orange 
roughy ( Hoplostethus atlanticus ) were targeted. Tire 
demersal fish faunas of these regions were 
documented in preliminary checklists: the mid¬ 
slope (-700-1200 m) region off southeastern 
Australia by Last and Harris (1981) and Koslow et 
al, (1994); the GAB by Newton and Klaer (1991), 
and the upper continental slope (-500 m) off 
southeastern Australia by May and Blaber (1989). 
Many of the 448 new Australian records in Paxton 
et al. (1989) were deep water species. 
In this paper we provide an overview of the 
faunal composition of fishes from the upper and 
