At last the painstaking effort of Dr Nikki King has bear fruit when he along with three taxonomy experts have discovered new species of deep sea fish which were completely unknown to science. The team aboard the Royal Research Ship Discovery trawled a stretch of the darkest depths of the Southern Indian Ocean.
The scientists were on the Benthic Crozet project, a major exploration of the waters and ocean dwellers off the Crozet Islands. Dr King said, “I could only identify the six so far – not down to species level. So we packed them into preservative and took them home.” The team then worked closely with Dr Peter Møller and Professor Jørgen Nielsen of the Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, and Professor Guy Duhamel of the Paris Natural History Museum before the three confirmed the six were indeed new to science.
Nikki and her taxonomy collaborators had name the deep sea creatures. Professor Monty Priede, Director of Oceanlab, named the deep lurks a pink eelpout, Pachycara priedei. Professor George Wolff from the University of Liverpool called one species Paraliparis wolffi. And like such the other name of new species are Careproctus crozentensis, Apagesoma (new species) and Careproctus discoveryae.
Professor Priede said that Dr King did very well spotting the significance of these fishes among the catches. He added that finding six new species in one expedition is remarkable.
