CANBERRA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- Scientists have described two new deep-sea species, a lanternshark and a porcelain crab, discovered off the coast of the Australian state of Western Australia (WA).
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, said in a statement on Monday that both species were described using specimens collected during a CSIRO-led 2022 voyage on the research vessel Investigator.
The West Australian Lanternshark (Etmopterus westraliensis) was found at depths to 610 meters in the Gascoyne Marine Park area off WA, said Will White, an ichthyologist from the CSIRO Australian National Fish Collection.
The small, bioluminescent shark has large eyes for deep-sea vision and glows from light-emitting organs known as photophores on its belly and flanks, which inspired its name, White said.
The second discovery was a new porcelain crab, Porcellanella brevidentata. The tiny crab, opalescent white-yellow in color, lives in symbiosis with soft corals called sea pens along WA's Ningaloo Coast at depths to 122 meters, said Andrew Hosie, curator of aquatic zoology from the Western Australian Museum.
"Porcelain crabs are known as filter feeders, feeding on plankton by using modified mouthparts with long hairs to sweep the water for small pieces of food such as plankton, rather than the typical crab method of grabbing and pinching food with their claws," Hosie said.
Nearly 20 new species have now been identified with the help of specimens collected on the 2022 voyage, and researchers estimate that there are potentially up to 600 new species still waiting to be described from the voyage, the statement said. ■
