For the primary time, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have formally identified a replacement species of undersea creature-based solely on high-definition video footage captured at the underside of the ocean.
And what an undersea creature it’s. Meet Duobrachium sparks are – a weird, gelatinous species of ctenophore, encountered by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Deep Discoverer during a dive off the coast of Puerto Rico.
That encounter befell back in 2015, but when you’re acquisition to discovering an entirely new species – based solely on video evidence, for that matter, with no physical specimens to assist make your case – it helps to try and do your due diligence.
Luckily, Deep Discoverer’s cameras – the footage of which you’ll be able to see here – were up to the work, capable of reading subtle details on D. spark she’s body but a millimetre long.
Duobrachium sparksae. (NOAA)
Subsequent analysis of the organism – now detailed in an exceedingly new paper – indicates it’s easily distinguishable from all other known ctenophore species, the researchers say.
“It’s unique because we were able to describe a replacement species based entirely on high-definition video,” explains NOAA marine biologist Allen Collins.
“We haven’t got the identical microscopes as we might in a very lab, but the video can give us enough information to grasp the morphology intimately, like the situation of their reproductive parts and other aspects.”
Those aspects are manifold. From a distance, D. spark she’s most notable feature is its bulbous, balloon-like body, but it also features two prominent tentacle arms.
In total, three different individuals were filmed by the ROV at depths of around 3,900 metres (almost 2.5 miles down), with one amongst the animals appearing to perhaps be using its tentacles to anchor itself to the seabed.
“It was a fine-looking and unique organism,” says oceanographer Mike Ford.
“It moved sort of a hot air balloon attached to the seafloor on two lines, maintaining a particular altitude above the seafloor. Whether it’s attached to the seabed, we’re unsure. We failed to observe direct attachment during the dive, but it looks like the organism touches the seafloor.”
The other specimens may not are touching the seabed, but all three of the animals were spotted within two metres of it, in a very feature called the Arecibo Amphitheater, which lies within an underwater trench referred to as the Guajataca Canyon.
It’s in these very deep parts of the ocean where ctenophores are found, but the acute depth of their natural habitat means we do not encounter these mysterious animals – in addition to new species – fairly often.
Ctenophores elapse variety of common names, many of which seem almost comical: comb jellies (named after their ‘combs’ of fine cilia) is that the most well-liked, but they need also been stated as sea gooseberries, sea walnuts, and Venus’s girdles.
Digital illustrations of Duobrachium sparksae. (Nicholas Bezio).
While the animals can superficially resemble jellyfish, they’re not closely related. Ctenophores, which are carnivorous, subsist on small arthropods and various forms of larvae.
Up to about 200 species are described so far, with about one new species being found annually on the average, and most discoveries depend upon video capture methods for the premise of physical descriptions, given the difficulties of collecting specimens.
“This presents somewhat of a conundrum because taxonomy relies heavily upon physical type specimens preserved in museums to function references to which other material will be compared,” the researchers explain in their paper.
“Indeed, the thought of using photographic evidence to ascertain new species has been highly contentious in recent decades.”
Luckily, given the high-definition footage the team got off those three fine specimens of D. sparks are, the researchers say they didn’t get “any pushback” about their species discovery.
While the team hopes to gather specimens on future dives for physical analysis, they are saying it would be decades before they need the prospect to run into the invertebrate again.
For D. spark she’s sake, that may be for the best: bringing a gelatinous blob up to water level, when it normally resides about 4 kilometres under the ocean’s surface, maybe a messy affair.
“Even if we had the equipment, there would are little or no time to process the animal because gelatinous animals don’t preserve all right,” Collins says.
“Ctenophores are even worse than jellyfish during this regard.”