Scientists in New Zealand mentioned Tuesday they’ve found a brand new species of “ghost shark”, a sort of fish that prowls the Pacific Ocean ground looking prey greater than a mile down.
The Australasian Slender-nosed Spookfish was discovered residing within the deep waters of Australia and New Zealand, in accordance with scientists from Wellington-based Nationwide Institute of Water and Atmospheric Analysis (NIWA).
The specimens had been found throughout analysis within the Chatham Rise, an space of the Pacific which stretches round 1,000 kilometres (621 miles) east close to New Zealand’s South Island.
Ghost sharks, or chimaeras, are associated to sharks and rays, however are a part of a gaggle of fish whose skeletons are totally product of cartilage.
Often known as spookfish, the ghost sharks have haunting black eyes and easy, mild brown, scale-free pores and skin.
They feed off crustaceans at depths of as much as 2,600 metres (8,530 ft) utilizing their distinctive beak-like mouth.
“Ghost sharks like this one are largely confined to the ocean floor,” mentioned analysis scientist Brit Finucci.
Finucci gave the brand new species its scientific identify “Harriotta avia” in reminiscence of her grandmother.
“Their habitat makes them hard to study and monitor, meaning we don’t know a lot about their biology or threat status, but it makes discoveries like this even more exciting.”
The spookfish was beforehand regarded as a part of a single globally distributed species till scientists found it’s genetically and morphologically totally different to its cousins.
