Here's a bit of good news from the Gulf: Three new species of fish have been discovered in the Gulf of Mexico. The new species are flat, bottom-dwelling fish from the anglerfish family Ogcocephalidae that often inhabit the deep, dark depths of the ocean. Two of the species discovered have been classified as pancake batfish (and look more like pancakes than bats).
PhyOrg reports:
"Pancake batfishes have enormous heads and mouths that can thrust forward. This, combined with their ability to cryptically blend in with their surroundings, gives them an advantage for capturing prey. They use their stout, arm-like fins to 'walk' awkwardly along the substrate; their movements have been described as grotesque, resembling a walking bat. As most anglerfishes, batfishes have a dorsal fin that is modified into a spine or lure, although their lure excretes a fluid to reel in prey instead of bio-illuminating."
The bad news: all three newly discovered species of fish live in areas that have been partially or completely affected by the oil spill.
The pancake batfish occupy coastal areas in the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean, ranging from Louisiana to North Carolina. The third new fish has no known population outside of the Gulf and inhabits the area now ravaged by the oil spill.
John Sparks, curator of Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History stated: "One of the fishes that we describe is completely restricted to the oil spill area. If we are still finding new species of fishes in the Gulf, imagine how much diversity—especially microdiversity—is out there that we do not know about."
"These discoveries underscore the potential loss of undocumented biodiversity that a disaster of this scale may portend," says Sparks.
Information via PhysOrg.com. Photo via TreeHugger.
This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2010.