Malacological notes on a deep-sea environment in the Cretan Sea

The Cretan Sea molluscan fauna is still one of the least studied of the Mediterranean Sea. We studied samples collected by a fishing vessel at seven stations north-west of Crete (Aegean Sea) with a Van Veen grab in March 2022. Overall, 57 species were identified: 39 gastropods, 15 bivalves and 3 scaphopods. The shells belonged respectively to 26 epipelagic planktonic species and 31 deep-sea benthic species. The most relevant discovery of this research concerns two gastropods, Diaphana marshalli (Sykes, 1904) and Granigyra granulifera (Warén, 1992), two new records for the Aegean Sea.