IWAMOTO & MCCOSKER: DEEP-WATER FISHES OF THE PHILIPPINE EXPEDITION267 
Figure 3. The otter trawl during haul-back, otter doors on deck; note beam trawl on right behind black plastic tub. 
the specific name; a cf before the specific name indicates that the fish is similar to, but not the 
same as, the species indicated. 
The list of species and the classification of families largely follow Nelson’s (2006) Fishes of 
the World, Fourth Edition. 
Discussion 
The Coral Triangle has long been considered the center of diversity of marine organisms 
(Allen and Erdman, 2012) and the Philippines are thought by some (Carpenter and Springer 2005) 
to be the center of the center of diversity. The deepwater fish fauna of this region have yet to be 
adequately compared with those from other regions, but collections by the former U.S. Fish Com¬ 
mission steamer Albatross in the Philippines and Dutch East Indies during the early part of the 20th 
century (1907-1910) (see Smith and Williams 1999) provide a broad measure of the diversity of 
the deepwater fauna. No other expedition to this region has equaled the extent of coverage and 
resultant new species described from these Albatross collections. The French ORSTOM cruises 
over the past three decades collected huge numbers of fishes and invertebrates from offshore 
waters, but the fishes from those cruises have yet to be adequately examined and published on. A 
short ORSTOM cmise off Lubang Island in 1976 resulted in the collection of 43 deepwater fish 
species (de la Paz and Interior 1979) that was deposited in the Zoological Museum of the Univer¬ 
sity of the Philippines (UPZM). The list of species in that collection, included only a few species 
that corresponded with the HEPD list. We were unable to access the UPZM collection and there¬ 
fore could not check the identifications. Most ORSTOM collections are housed in the Museum 
