Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute used remotely operated vehicles to find three new species of snailfish off the California coast.
Far beneath the waves off California’s coast, researchers have filmed a pink, bumpy snailfish with striking blue eyes and beard-like whiskers drifting just above the muddy seafloor of Monterey Canyon — more than 10,700 feet (3,300 meters) down.
The unusual fish, spotted by scientists from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), turned out to be one of three newly described snailfish species surviving in the crushing darkness of the deep sea.
Snailfishes are already outliers in the fish world. With over 400 known species, they range from tide pools to the deepest ocean trenches. Some even sport a belly “suction cup” that lets them cling to rocks or hitchhike on other animals.
“Snailfishes give us a rare chance to study how animals adapt to the extremes of the deep ocean, all within one family,” said Mackenzie Gerringer, a biologist at SUNY Geneseo and lead researcher on the project.
The team first spotted the pink newcomer, later named the bumpy snailfish (Careproctus colliculi), in 2019 using a remotely operated vehicle. Later dives in the human-occupied submersible Alvin revealed two more species at depths of around 13,100 feet (4,000 m):
- the jet-black dark snailfish (Careproctus yanceyi), and
- the sleek snailfish (Paraliparis em), a slender species without a suction disk.
Sorting one snailfish from another is no easy task. Scientists compared vertebrae counts, fin rays, sensory pore placement, and the structure of suction disks — along with genetic analysis — to confirm that the three were indeed species new to science.
The findings, published August 27 in Ichthyology and Herpetology, highlight how little we still know about even well-studied regions of the ocean.
“Discovering two undescribed species on the same dive, in one of the best-studied deep-sea canyons, shows just how much remains to be learned about life on our planet,” Gerringer said.
Deep-sea exploration, she added, is only possible thanks to close collaboration between scientists, engineers, and ship crews — a reminder of how much teamwork it takes to reveal the secrets of Earth’s most inaccessible habitats.