Discovering a New Marine Wonder
Bruce Robison, a dedicated marine biologist, has spent years exploring the mysterious depths of the Monterey Canyon off the coast of California. This enormous rift in the Pacific seabed plunges sharply from shallow coastal waters to depths exceeding two miles. In the early 2000s, during one of his robotic vehicle explorations, Dr. Robison encountered a peculiar organism that was entirely unfamiliar to him.
“We had no idea what it was,” Dr. Robison recounted, reflecting on that intriguing moment.
The creature, resembling a gelatinous blob, featured a large, hood-like structure at one end, delicate fingerlike appendages at the other, and vibrant internal organs visible through its translucent body. Confounded by this discovery, Dr. Robison and a colleague at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute embarked on an investigative journey to uncover the identity of this enigmatic organism.
Now, a quarter-century later, after meticulously studying 157 specimens of this peculiar creature in both their natural habitats and laboratory settings, the researchers are ready to share their findings with the world. In a public release scheduled for Tuesday, they announced that this newly classified organism represents an entirely new family within the diverse array of life inhabiting the ocean’s midwaters — the largest and least understood region of the Earth’s biosphere. Furthermore, its appearance and behaviors distinguish it significantly from its closest relatives on the evolutionary tree.
The scientists have identified this creature as a remarkable new type of nudibranch, commonly known as a sea slug. The term ‘nudibranch’ comes from the Latin phrase meaning “naked gills,” a reference to their distinctive lack of shells, which sets them apart from their terrestrial snail relatives.
What makes this discovery particularly extraordinary is the creature’s mode of locomotion: it swims. Until now, most nudibranchs documented by science have been characterized by their slow movement across coral reefs, seagrass beds, kelp forests, the ocean floor, and rocky tide pools.
