Ever since the explorations of the Danish expedition
to the Kei Islands, led by the famous zoologist Th. Mortensen in 1922, the eastern
seas of Indonesia have been renowned as a hotspot of marine diversity. In 1991,
the French-Indonesian KARUBAR cruise took place on board R.V. Baruna Jaya
1 in the Banda and Arafura Seas, off the Kai and Tanimbar Islands (Eastern
Indonesia). The expedition, which had a dual zoological and fisheries goal,
collected a rich material of deep-sea benthos between 200 and 1200 m. Scattered
faunistic results have already been published elsewhere, but the present volume
is the first consolidated report, consisting of a narrative and 13 contributed
articles on the systematics and biogeography of Scleractinia (1 paper), Mollusca
(5 papers), Crustacea Decapoda (6 papers) and Crinoidea (1 paper). Among the
more remarkable results is a review of the highly diverse azooxanthellate coral
fauna from the Philippines and Indonesia, and a description of a major new hermit
crab assemblage. Altogether the contributions report new data on over 400 species
of invertebrates, of which 97 species and 11 genera are described as new. The
volume is richly illustrated with numerous photographic plates, line drawings
and 2 colour plates, representing living animals. Because of the key biogeographical
position of Indonesia, the results presented in this volume bear relevance to
a vast region in the tropical Indian & Pacific Oceans.