Evolution Diary

This otherworldly creature was among a haul of strange new fish trawled from the bottom of the oceans of Antarctica.

The eelpout Pachycara cousinsi is one of six previously unknown deep-sea fishes caught at depths of 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) during a British research expedition to the remote Crozet Islands in the Indian Ocean between Antarctica and Africa.

Team member Nicola King of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, recently announced the new species.

P. cousinsi is known from just a single, 1.35 foot (41 centimeter) long specimen caught during the 2005 to 2006 voyage. King named the fleshy-lipped species in honor of her fiancé, geophysicist Michael Cousins.

“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” the marine biologist said.

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The bright pink eelpout Pachycara priedei is one of six new fish species discovered during deep-sea trawls off the Crozet Islands in the oceans off Antarctica.

The species hunts along the ocean floor, seeking fish or whale carcasses where scavenging crustaceans gather, according to Peter Rask Møller, curator of fishes at the Natural History Museum of Denmark.

The fish’s tiny eyes may pick up bioluminescent signals from squid and shrimp, while its snout is studded with sensory pits for detecting the movement of prey in the darkness, Møller said.

Deep-sea eelpouts have watery, jelly-like flesh, probably due to their sluggish lifestyle and as an adaptation to pressures exerted on their bodies, he added.

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Looking like glass tulips, these tunicates are actually animals—early seafloor colonizers in areas of the Southern Ocean recently disturbed by iceberg scouring.

Scientists say these plankton-eating tunicates that can grow up to a yard (meter) tall. In the Southern Ocean they were found “standing in fields like poppies,” said Martin Riddle, the Australian Antarctic Division scientist who led a recent expedition to take a census of Antarctic marine life.

News and pictures from National Geographic