In 2012, I ran a trip sampling the nautilus populations along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef explicitly to see if nautiluses living on marine protected areas of the reef are as rare as from places where they are fished for their pretty shells (such as in the Philippines and Indonesia).
Work along the Great Barrier Reef in the 1990s had shown that two different and accepted species are present. One, Nautilus pompilius, is the most widespread of all the nautiluses across their vast Pacific and Indian Ocean range. The second, Nautilus stenomphalus, is found only on the Great Barrier Reef. It differs from the more common N. pompilius in having a hole right at the center of its shell. (In N. pompilius, there is a thick calcareous plug.)
There are also marked differences in shell coloration and pattern of stripes on the shell. But when the Australian species was first brought up from its 1,000-foot habitat alive, in the late 20th century, scientists were astonished to find that N. stenomphalus has markedly different anatomy as well on its thick “hood,” a large fleshy area that protects the interior guts and other anatomical soft parts when the animal pulls into its shell. In N. pompilius the hood is covered with low bumps of flesh, like warts. Meanwhile the N. stenomphalus hood is covered with a forest of brushy projections that rise above the hood like a thick carpet of twiggy moss, or tiny trees of flesh; the coloration of the hood is also radically different.