Giant star fish, hydroids (see photo: urrr...mop-like sea animals?), sea-squirts (that really just look like a squirt of gelatin), sea-spiders, daggertooths and sea-pigs, are just a few of the 30,000 rare sea creatures found by a team of researchers on a large-scale survey of Antarctica.

Over 35 days they traveled about 2000-miles collecting specimens on the surface and from the sea-bed as part of the International Polar Year and Census of Antarctic Marine Life programs, which study the diversity of Antarctic marine life. Using advanced video imagine, the researchers also managed to photograph the seafloor to a depth of 2.1 miles.

Published recently in National Geographic, you can see an incredible, jaw-scrunching photo slide-show that gives a taste of these marine species, on their website here.

Filed under: Photos, Antarctica, Ecotourism, News