Tuesday, 11 February 2025
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“Casper” – this is the working name given to a new species of octopus discovered in recent days by NOAA. The so far unknown species was found in the depths of the ocean near Hawaii. Why such an unusual name? Well, the newly discovered creature with its characteristic appearance is reminiscent of a character of a nice little ear called “Casper” from a series of animated films for children.
The discovery of ‘Caspra’ was made by a NOAA research team from the ship Okeanos Explorer. The unusual representative of marine fauna was spotted and recorded by the unmanned Deep Discoverer vehicle, at an extreme depth of 4,300 metres. No wonder it remained a species unknown to humans for so long.
Mike Vecchione, NOAA Fisheries National Systematics Lab zoologist and expert on cephalopods living in the deep sea, who participated in the expedition remotely through live video streaming, said a few words about the unusual deep-sea dweller.
“The first thought I had was – Wow! I have never seen a species that looked like this before! – This particular individual had no fins, and similar creatures that I know and live at such enormous depths, have fins on the sides of their body. This meant that we were dealing with a completely new and unknown species. There is also a noticeable lack of pigment cells, which also sets this individual apart from other species.”
The new species still does not have an official name and this will not change until a live individual can be obtained so that its anatomical features and DNA sequences can be characterised.
As Vecchione explains, it’s always nice when a new, undiscovered species is found, but as of today the level of knowledge of the ocean depths is so low that such discoveries happen by the dozen. To put it simply – we still know almost nothing about the ocean depths and its inhabitants.
Source: noaa.gov
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