Introduction

In 1874, the "Challenger" occupied four deepwater stations near New Zealand. From two of the stations (168 and 169) holothurians were collected. Station 168 (40° 28′ S., 177° 43′ E., 1,100 fathoms) revealed material of a new elasipod species, Enypniastes eximia Theel. Station 169 (37° 34′ S., 179° 22′ E., 700 fathoms) was rather more fruitful, and the following holothurian species were taken:

• Mesothuria lactea (Theel)
• Heteromolpadia marenzelleri (Theel)
• Molpadia violacea (Studer)
• Hedingia albicans (Theel)

Since the publication of these discoveries (Theel, 1882, 1886a) no further deep water holothurian species were recorded from the New Zealand region until 1963, when the molpadid Paracaudina chilensis (Müller) was described from the bathyal zone in Cook Strait (Pawson, 1963). More recently Pawson (1965a, 1965b) has described two new genera and five new species from deep water in the New Zealand region. Fell (1958) has already reported on the extremely rich deep sea fauna of echinoderms other than holothurians of the New Zealand region, and it was expected that the holothurians were correspondingly diverse and would reward further study. Recently several scientific institutions in New Zealand have conducted local investigations of the bathyal zone. The holothurians collected during these expeditions have been examined by the writer, and are described here.

Throughout this account the bathyal zone (= archibenthal) is taken to comprise the continental slope of New Zealand, from the edge of the shelf (at a depth of ca. 180 metres) to the abyssal zone (4,000 metres).

For access to material I would like to thank the following: Professor L. R. Richardson, formerly of the Department of Zoology, Victoria University of Wellington; Dr R. B. Pike, formerly of the Fisheries Laboratory, Marine Department; Dr R. K. Dell, Dominion Museum; Mr J. W. Brodie, New Zealand Oceanographic Institute; and Dr J. B. Gilpin-Brown, Auckland University. I am also grateful to page 2 Dr Bent Hansen of the Universitetets Zoologiske Museum, Copenhagen, Denmark, for comparative material of some elasipod holothurians. Finally I would like to thank Professor H. B. Fell for his valued comments and advice, and colleagues at the U.S. National Museum for reading the manuscript of this paper.