Our lovely creatures of the deep reveal themselves for first time

BLOOMING spectacularly beneath the surface of the ocean, these striking sea creatures look like they'd be at home in any tropical paradise.
But these wonders of the natural world are not to be found in the warm waters at the end of along-haul flight - they are Scottish.
This collection of amazing photographs, taken with state-of-the-art digital camera technology, reveals for the first time what life is like in the chilly deep sea habitats.
And here's what is lurking in the deep waters miles off the north-west coast of Scotland.
Our main picture shows brightly coloured sea spiders mating.
Other incredible images reveal cold-water colour reefs, sponge fields, red sea urchins and deep-sea feather-stars, also known as sea lilies.
Looking closely, another photo captures a disguised monkfish, which is lurking in the sandy depths as it waits to capture its next meal. The images look like they are from the tropical seas around the Great Barrier Reef, the Maldives or the Seychelles.
But they are in fact from the massive Rockall Trough, the deep water channel to the northwest of Scotland and Ireland.
Digital camera equipment and acoustic technology was used to open up this particular habitat on the Wyville-Thomson Ridge, the northern boundary of the Rockall Trough.
The sheer scale of the find more than 200metres below the sea surface amazed marine biologists from the University of Plymouth's School of Biological Sciences.
The sea creatures were captured on film and in photographs, and who knows what could lurk thousands of feet below, in the depths of the Rockall Trough itself?
Cold-water reefs such as this stretch from the edges of the Antarctic to Greenland and these images will help marine scientists with conservation efforts.
The seabeds in Britain's deepest waters are being mapped to help policymakers decide on issues such as oil exploration in the future.
Dr Kerry Howell, academic research fellow with the Plymouth school, said: "We are the first humans to see these beautiful areas of the deep sea. The reefs we discovered were large and very spectacular in comparison to other reefs we were already aware of.
"What was really special was to see the fantastic and delicate animals that live in the deep in their own environment.
"We hope that, by putting the images and video we took of these fabulous areas on public display, people will appreciate and admire the UK's deep sea habitats and species and want to conserve these sensitive areas for future generations."
The team spent three months at sea "acoustic mapping" parts of the underwater mountains and ridges in the Rockall Trough area, which is twice the size of Luxembourg.
Sound waves are fired at the seabed, with each returning echo revealing to scientists the depth at which it hit a feature.
Then a map of the seafloor is created before the latest hi-tech cameras are mounted on a metal frame and lowered to the seabed to capture digital moving and still images.
Divers would be unable to withstand the pressures at which the cameras operate.
The film and all 26 pictures are going on public display in Plymouth next week.