An international crew of scientists found biological treasure on the coral reefs and sand flats of French Frigate Shoals this month, including up to 100 species never before seen in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, and many of which are entirely new to science.

In blazing reds and oranges, purples and yellows, an artist's easel full of delicate shades of ivory, and a rainbow of other colors, the reefs produced amazing results, said Rusty Brainard, chief of the Coral Reef Ecosystem Division of NOAA's Pacific Island Fisheries Science Center.

"There were lots of organisms that people were saying, 'Wow! What's that?' " said Joel Martin, a zoologist in charge of invertebrates for the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.

The information gathered by the scientists will not only provide a list of what species live in the area, but further studies over time will show how well the ecosystem is being managed, and what kinds of threats it faces.

While a sanctuary such as the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine National Monument can protect the islands and reefs from human disturbance, there still are threats from warming oceans and seawater growing more acidic — and continued study can track top-to-bottom changes in the web of ocean life as a result of these changes, Brainard said. The monument is designed to protect the coral and algae reef of the islands that extend 1,100 miles beyond Kaua'i to Kure Atoll.

The expedition to French Frigate ran from Oct. 8 to 28, with 16 days of active collecting at the island 450 miles northwest of Kaua'i.

At a minimum, the mission returned with 1,000 species of invertebrates — crabs, worms, sea cucumbers, starfish and other forms of life.

Additionally, experts in marine algae found 160 unique species of limu, many of them the hard, crusty algae that help build reefs. And there are still uncounted forms of life in water samples and sand collected for study by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution at Massachusetts.

"It was a very successful expedition by almost any criterion, and the discovery has really only just begun," Martin said.

HUNTING FOR CLUES

With the collecting done, researchers will begin a detailed analysis of what they've got, including careful studies of biological features and also genetic analysis. They hope to get clues of how the creatures got to the isolated Hawaiian chain, and where in the ocean their closest relatives are.

Working from aboard the NOAA research ship Oscar Elton Sette, the scientific team of 19 included 12 taxonomists — experts in identifying organisms. The trip was part of a global count of marine life. The French Frigate Shoals project is part of the Census of Coral Reef Ecosystems of the International Census of Marine Life.

Dozens upon dozens of the species they found are new discoveries for the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands and perhaps all of the Hawaiian archipelago, but many also may be entirely new to science, meaning no one has identified them before.

The finds particularly impressed a nonscientist on board — photographer Susan Middleton, who has won critical acclaim for her National Geographic book with David Liittschwager, "Archipelago, Portraits of Life in the World's Most Remote Island Sanctuary."

"It is not until you start looking through the macro lens at these organisms, and give them time to get settled, that you start to see the vibrant colors, the fine hairs covering a crab's shell, the flecks of color in the translucent tentacles of an anemone, the incredible evolutionary adaptations for survival," she said.

Coral expert Jim Maragos, of the Fish and Wildlife Service's Pacific Remote Island National Wildlife Refuge Complex, has been diving on these reefs for much of his adult life, but was thrilled when diver John Starmer showed him something new.

"There was this tiny coral colony that John showed to me off the eastern side of the atoll that I have no idea what it is. It is a complete unknown," Maragos said.

The research mission did not have a permit to collect the coral for identification, so they took its picture and a GPS location, so they can find it again on another mission.

"It was very small, but quite spectacular. It had stalks, like little rosettes. It was sort of ivory and pink," Middleton said.

"It could be some kind of weird morph of something else, but we don't think so," Brainard said. Probably, it was an entirely new species.

Brainard said the international crew worked remarkably well together, gathering each evening to review the day's results and to plan the next day.

"Operationally, things went very, very well. What amazed me was how well everyone worked together," he said.

"We sort of fed on each other," Martin said. "There was a whirlwind of activity and knowledge. It was very exciting. This gathering of hard-working scientists produced so much more than any of us could have done on our own. Every evening's science meetings displayed a real growing excitement about what could be done," Martin said.

CHRISTMAS TREE WORMS

In addition to what was there, the researchers kept track of what wasn't.

"There is a group of worms called Christmas tree worms, with beautifully colored spiral feeding appendages. They burrow into coral. They were far less common than we expected," Martin said. "There is also a small group of crabs, porcelain crabs. They are usually dominant, and we saw few of them. Sometimes that's even more interesting, because it raises the question of why it isn't there."

The scientific teams used an array of collection techniques at more than 50 sites around the atoll. There were light traps and bait traps and deepwater scoops and sand dredges, low-power marine vacuums and delicate rubble-brushing techniques, plankton tows and more, all designed to collect specimens with the least damage to the marine environment, Brainard said.

As an oceanographer, Brainard is accustomed to studying things on a large scale, and he said colleagues teased him about getting excited about all the different things he could find in a single bucket of sand and seawater.

"This opened my eyes to the really fine scale," he said.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.