More than 2,000 new marine species are described with each passing year.Īs Maddie Stone at Earther reports, most expeditions into the abyss return some previously unseen life form. Until then, they have been dubbed the pink, purple, and blue Atacama snailfish.Īlthough ocean waters blanket nearly three-quarters of Earth’s surface, scientists estimate that more than 80 percent of the underwater realm of life remains unexplored. The three new species will be bequeathed true scientific names once the findings are published in a scientific journal, David Grossman reports for Popular Mechanics. Tragically, when brought to the surface, snailfish bodies “melt rapidly” from the lack of pressure, but the researchers took great pains to preserve their single specimen, which is now being studied. One of the new snailfish specimen was even ensnared by the researchers’ traps, which are equipped with tasty bait to lure fish and video cameras that acquired over 100 hours of footage of ultra-deep sea life. Whatever the adaptations are, they serve the snailfish well: Even though they each clock in at less than a foot long, according to Linley, at such extreme depths, they’re “top predators” and “look very well-fed.” “Something about the snailfish… allows them to adapt to living very deep,” explains Newcastle University’s Thomas Linley, one of the scientists leading the expedition, in a press release. But over 100 species of snailfish exist, and scientists estimate many more remain undescribed, especially at the ocean’s greatest depths. Snailfish look nothing like you’d expect: With their bulbous heads and tapered, ribbon-like bodies, these marine fishes more resemble frowning tadpoles than their slow-moving, shell-shackled namesakes on land. The trench is home to pressures approximately 750 times what we feel at sea level, and frigid temperatures just a hair above freezing.* But the newly discovered snailfish are perfectly content to swim these hellish waters, due in part to their gelatinous bodies, which are almost entirely free of bones, save for the little structures in their inner ears that help with balance. The efforts were borne out of a collaboration between 40 scientists from 17 different nations trawling the waters of the Atacama Trench, a cavernous, rocky gash near the South American coast of the Pacific Ocean. This week, scientists from Newcastle University report the discovery of three new species of snailfish nearly 25,000 feet below the surface of the sea. But without the pressures of the deep sea to support them, their fragile, boneless bodies melt when they crest the surface of the sea. We’d love to hear from you! If you have some favorites not listed here, don’t hesitate to list your thoughts.Outfitted with glossy, swishing tails and fan-like fins, snailfish now come in delightful shades of pink, purple, and blue. Let me know what you thought about our choices in the comments below. Salps strain the pumped water through their internal filters and feed on plankton. They are a type of tunicate, they move by contracting and pumping water through their bodies. These are by far my favorite of anything translucent, it’s a shame that they’re nowhere to be seen in the aquarium hobby. They require a high oxygen environment to do well. These are also a peaceful type of fish that look go great together. This is due to many of them dying prematurely due to the injection procedure.Ĭommon Names: Humphead Glassfish, Humphead Perchlet, Humphead Glass Perchlet They are considered controversial by some hobbyists due to the artificial coloring injected into them. These are peaceful fish that are fairly common in the aquarium hobby. These are peaceful catfish, great in community tanksĬommon Names: Indian glass tetra, Painted Glass Tetra Common Names: Triangle Glass Tetra, Mountain Crystal TetraĪ rare schooling fish in the aquarium hobby, does well in a tank with live plantsĬommon Names: Glass Catfish, Ghost Catfish, Glass Cat
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