The Pacific is the largest and deepest ocean basin on the planet. Scientists barely know just how many different organisms call these deep waters home. Many of these areas are remote and difficult to explore, but that hasn’t stopped efforts to find out what’s really lurking under the sea. In February, a team of researchers exploring the Bounty Trough off the coast of New Zealand discovered roughly 100 new and potentially new marine species.
Team members from the nonprofit organization Ocean Census, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand (NIWA), and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa collected close to 1,800 samples during the three week long expedition. Some of the specimens were uncovered more than 15,000 feet deep.
“It looks like we have a great haul of new, undiscovered species,” Ocean Census science director and expedition co-leader Alex Rogers said in a statement. “By the time all our specimens are examined, we will be north of 100 new species. But what’s really surprised me here is the fact this extends to animals like fish–we think we’ve got three new species of fish.”
The team also found dozens of new mollusks, a shrimp, and a cephalopod that is a type of predatory mollusk. According to Ocean Census, we currently know of 240,000 marine species and an average of 2,200 species are discovered annually.
[Related: See the strange new species discovered near Chile—with the help of a deep-diving sea robot.]
One find has been particularly baffling to the experts working to identify the new species. Initially, the team believed it was a new sea anemone or a seastar, but taxonomists do not believe that it is either of those species.
“We now think it could be a new species of octocoral, but also a new genus [wider…
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