A new, ‘adorable’ deep-sea fish swims into view

For an animal, surviving in the ocean’s deepest trenches requires remarkable adaptations: a gelatinous body that can withstand pressure, bioluminescent features to guide it, and a transparent coloration for camouflage in the pitch-black darkness. The combination often gives deep-sea creatures an alien-like look.

But the ocean’s newest deep-sea fish, the bumpy snailfish, proves that not all is strange and scary in the unknown abyss. “It’s pretty adorable,” said Mackenzie Gerringer, a marine biologist at the State University of New York at Geneseo, and a counter to the perception that deep-sea creatures are “monsters.”

The bumpy snailfish was among three new snailfish species discovered off the coast of California, at a depth of more than 10,000 feet, from an expedition led by the Monterey