Marianne Nyegaard, a postdoctoral student at Australia’s Murdoch University, had been searching for evidence of a fourth ocean sunfish species for nearly five years. And in 2014, the researcher finally found the gigantic sunfish washed up on the shore in New Zealand, marking the first new sunfish species to be identified in 130 years.
Nyegaard and a team of scientists from her university first determined there were four individual species of ocean sunfish back in 2009. DNA samples from more than 150 sunfish led the researchers to believe that four distinct species of sunfish must exist. But skin samples were on record for just three species, leading them to conclude that an undiscovered fourth species was out there somewhere.
Sight yet unseen, the team went ahead and named the species the Hoodwinker, which Nyegaard said in a statement was due to the creature’s elusive nature. They also assigned it a scientific name, Mola tecta, stemming from “tectus,” the Latin word for hidden.
Daily Emails and Alerts - Get the best of Newsweek delivered to your inbox
“We retraced the steps of early naturalists and taxonomists to understand how such a large fish could have evaded discovery all this time. Overall, we felt science had been repeatedly tricked by this cheeky species, which is why we named it the Hoodwinker,” Nyegaard said.
Nyegaard and her team traveled up and down the Australian coast hoping to find evidence of the fourth sunfish species. However, it wasn’t until May 2014 when Nyegaard, who was in Perth at the time, was finally able to lay her eyes on an actual Hoodwinker. She received a tip from a New England fishery claiming that four massive sunfish had been found stranded in the sand at a beach near Christchurch. She left Australia immediately to take samples of the dead fish.
"When I was asked if I would be bringing my own crane to receive a specimen, I knew I was in for a challenging but awesome adventure," Nyegaard said in a press release.
For the next three years, Nyegaard traveled thousands of miles around the Southern Hemisphere in attempts to find more Hoodwinkers, mostly relying on the help of local museums and fisherman to direct her to sunfish found stranded on remote beaches. Over the time period, she collected 27 specimens of the species, and was finally was able to announce the discovery in a paper published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society on Wednesday.
In her findings, Nyegaard described the fish as having a slimmer and sleeker adult body compared to other species of sunfish. Whereas most sunfish develop a protruding snout and a swollen back fin with lumps and bumps along the ridges, the Hoodwinker does not. Known to be the heaviest bony fish in the ocean—sunfish can weigh anywhere from 545 to 2,200 pounds—the Hoodwinker is also significantly bigger than its sunfish cousins, weighing about two tons and reaching up to 10 feet in length.
In an article for The Conversation recently, Nyegaard said she hasn’t been able to determine the exact range of the sunfish’s habitat. However, the fish have since been located in parts of the Southern Hemisphere, including waters near New Zealand, Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales, South Africa and southern Chile. According to Nyegaard, these locations could indicate Hoodwinkers may prefer colder water climates, a departure from other sunfish species, which are typically found in temperate and tropical waters.
Sunfish aren’t rare—mentions of the gigantic sea creatures stem all the way back to history books written by Pliny the Elder between 77 and 79 A.D. However, studying sunfish can be particularly challenging because they usually live deep in the ocean. Although they can be spotted at the ocean’s surface with the side of their body facing the sun—hence the name sunfish—they can dive several hundreds of miles down to the ocean floor. When they aren’t basking in the sunlight, they predominately live 150-175 miles beneath the ocean’s surface.
Following the discovery of the fourth sunfish species, Nyegaard is hoping to find out more about the fish’s breeding habitat and feeding habits.
Read Again Biggest Ocean Sunfish Found in New Zealand is the First Species of it's Kind Discovered in 130 Years : http://ift.tt/2uqQSLkBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Biggest Ocean Sunfish Found in New Zealand is the First Species of it's Kind Discovered in 130 Years"
Post a Comment