The ‘ghost shark’ is so rarely seen in the wild that spotting it is almost like seeing a ghost.
Yet a team of scientists have not only spotted a never-before-seen species of the elusive fish, they’ve also dragged it to the surface from nearly half a mile deep in the Andaman Sea off the coast of Thailand, near the holiday destination of Phuket.
The newly described specimen has black, feathery fins, a tail as sharp as a stinger, and giant green eyes, almost a third of the length of its head.
Genetic testing has revealed it to be a new species, increasing the number of known ghost shark species in the world from 53 to 54.
This newly identified species of ‘ghost shark’ is 276 mm long (10.9 in) and has eyes that make up almost a third of the head length.
An international team of scientists collected it during a deep-sea expedition commissioned by Thailand’s Ministry of Fisheries and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization.
They caught it in a trawl net dragged by a boat across the seabed during a 2018 expedition, when they also caught two other related fish. kind.
Their depth readings showed the diver was between 2,533 and 2,543 feet deep when captured (2,533 to 2,543 feet), almost half a mile.
When they first examined it, the team incorrectly identified the 35cm-long fish as a well-known species of ghost shark, the long-spine chimera. Chimera off. macrospina.
But after further research, including genetic testing, they have now concluded that it is in fact a new species: Chimaera Supapaenamed after fish researcher Supap Monkolprasit.
Monkolprasit was a Thai ichthyologist who devoted her life to studying cartilaginous fish such as ghost sharks until she died in 2013.
Although the creature is called a ‘shark’, it is not in the same group as the giant apex predator.
This ghost shark belongs to the so-called fish order Chimeraso called because the members often look as if they were sewn together from the parts of other fish – like the mythical Greek beast that was part lion, part goat, and part dragon.
Genetic testing has helped reveal the fact that scientists were actually looking at a new species of ghost shark.
Samples from the specimen were sequenced and then compared to the genetic sequences of eight other species of ghost sharks, including five that lived in the region.
It was a difficult task, because the deep-sea fish’s DNA began to break down after scientists brought it to the surface.
These tentacula belong to a species of ghost shark relative called Neoharriotta pinnata. Hidden near their pectoral fins, the spiny organs are used to hold the female in place during mating.
Members of the ghost shark order have been found to grow up to four feet long, but scientists suspect they can grow as long as six feet in some cases
But they got enough, and when they compared more than 1,000 base pairs of DNA with the sequences of other sharks, it was clearly not a match.
Based on their examinations, they determined it to be an immature male.
Now that they’ve identified it, the scientists can describe how it differs from other species of ghost sharks: “massive head with a short snout,” oval eyes that make up 32.2 percent of the head length, and “deciduous skin.”
Interestingly, prey species such as mackerel have developed deciduous skin that peels off easily, allowing them to escape the grasp of predators.
So maybe the new ghost fish has some larger deep-sea predators.
Strikingly, male chimeras have sexual organs on top of their heads – a structure called a tentaculum.
This, along with two others hidden near their pectoral fins, is used to hold a female in place during mating.
Because they often live around deep-sea continental slopes and ocean ridges, ghost sharks can be caught using bottom trawls.
The darkest depths of the ocean hold many secrets, and the more scientists discover, the more they realize how much they still have to discover.
“Evolutionarily, these chimeras are among the oldest fish lineages, with lineages dating back 300 to 400 million years,” said lead study author David Elbert, program director of the Pacific Shark Research Center at San Jose State University in California. told LiveScience.
‘The discovery of new species like this chimera tells us how little we know about the marine environment and how much remains to be explored.’
The team published its findings in the journal Raffles Bulletin of Zoology.