First Ever Real-Life Sighting of Ghost Fish

Featured in Ripley's Believe It or Not!

The CAPSTONE

The Campaign to Address Pacific monument Science, Technology, and Ocean NEeds, or CAPSTONE for short, is a major science dedicated to studying the deepest parts of the Pacific.

Expeditions into some of the deepest waters in the Pacific have been going on this year. The scientists are hoping to gather more information about these ecosystems. Virtually no information has been collected from these places because of how hard they have been to get to.

But with advances in technology comes the ability to go farther and deeper than before.

Along with learning how these ecosystems function and what place each animal serves in them, the researchers have been able to discover new species.

The Ghost Fish

By I, Kmusser via Wikimedia

While the ghost fish isn’t a new discovery in the sense of animal life, this is the first time that one has been seen alive.

As a part of CAPSTONE, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship Okeanos Explorer has been studying the Marianas Trench.

With a maximum-known depth of 10,994 m (6.8 miles), the Trench is the deepest part of the world’s oceans. It’s located off the coast of the Mariana Islands.

In the deep dark depths of the trench, the scientists are finding new animal life, and shining light, quite literally, on life they already knew existed.

The ghost fish is something that’s been seen before, but never has one been witnessed alive. They live so deep in the ocean that they get no sunlight. This fact probably accounts for their pale ghostly appearance. It’s a fish without scales, and its sunken in eyes completely lack pigment.

It isn’t the only ghostly finding since the beginning of CAPSTONE. In February, a new breed of octopus was discovered. Called Casper, this little guy is equally as pigmentary deficient as the fish.

There’s also the sea pig which tends to be translucent as well.

What will they discover next?

Source: First Ever Real-Life Sighting of Ghost Fish