Christmas Island Research Initiative
for Abyssal Studies
Push off the jetty at Flying Fish Cove, and within minutes you're above depths that multi-million dollar research ships spend days at sea to reach. Nowhere else has such deep water, so close to land.
The CIRIAS DeepList documents species, behaviour and habitat from Christmas Island's 200m+ depths, and openly publishes it here to help inspire and inform future research. It's a living archive, growing with every camera deployment and collaboration.
If you're bringing a deep sea research vessel or project here - or have caught something cool on your camera or fishing line - we'd love to hear from you. We're keen to collate information from as many sources as possible into one convenient, central hub, that's open to everyone.
First recorded here in 2020, we've documented a significant library of 14+ individuals. These ancient, rare, deep-sea sharks reach 5.5m.
First recorded here in 2025, we're building quite a library of identifiable individuals of this rare deep sea shark, growing to 3m.
Identified by its fins as it slid briefly past in 2025, very little is known of this rare, Endangered species, growing to at least 5.2m.
CIRIAS already has local knowledge, on ground relationships and data that can make a visiting program more efficient, productive and safer. Talk to us - we'd love to help.
Get In Touch
On 2nd August 2020, local wildlife photographer Chris Bray put a torch and a GoPro inside a metal tube and strapped on some bait. That night, he kayaked out into the cove, lowered it on a string 300m to the bottom, attached a float and went home. Next morning he hauled it back up and excitedly reviewed the footage: Fish. Starfish. Then, incredibly, a huge Bluntnose Sixgill Shark (Hexanchus griseus) cruised into view — and everything changed.
Every year, Chris explored deeper and deeper, developing an untethered system with better cameras, better lights, motion detection and other tech, and best of all, no rope — it returns to the surface at a preset time. With every deployment revealing new discoveries and surprised by the lack of information about what was down there - and the time taken for scientific publications - Chris created CIRIAS in 2026 to document his findings and support future research.
Coming soon - an interactive visual journey from the surface into true darkness, meeting the species living at every depth along the way...
Start The Descent →(Coming soon)Selected frames from the field. Follow for the full feed.
No spam — just new discoveries, straight to your inbox.
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We'll be in touch when CIRIAS logs something new.
