12/25/2023 0 Comments Translucent fish![]() Here's to looking through you, little buddy. We've seen some real doozies from the deep - I'm looking at you, giant siphonophore - but the barreleye may be one of the most adorably weird of the bunch. That lets the fish track what's going into its dainty mouth. Originally, scientists thought the fish's tubular eyes could only see upward above the fish's head, but a paper published in 2009 described how the eyes could rotate inside the transparent shield so it could see forward as well. The barreleye has been a fish of fascination for MBARI researchers for some time. The two little indentations on its face are actually olfactory organs, essentially nostrils. MBARI researchers have discovered the fish eat jellies and max out at 6 inches (15 centimeters) in length. The deep-sea creature is used to operating in darkness and its unusual eyes help it find food in those conditions. Sometimes called a 'spook fish,' no doubt because of its appearance, the barreleye has a completely transparent forehead. "MBARI's remotely operated vehicles Ventana and Doc Ricketts have logged more than 5,600 dives and recorded more than 27,600 hours of video, yet we've only encountered this fish nine times," the organization said. This unusual fish is found in the deep ocean. The story has been edited to correct that fact.The barreleye is a rare sight. * Editor’s Note, September 12, 2018: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that pressure in the trench was approximately 2,500 times what we feel at sea level, when, in fact it is about 750 times. But even Linley marveled at “ three species so clearly different at the same time.” 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. Outfitted with glossy, swishing tails and fan-like fins, snailfish now come in delightful shades of pink, purple, and blue.
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