Would you just look at him ? resile to lifeout of a Pixar movie , the ghostly fiddling chap pictured above was discovered last month by Deep Discoverer , the abstruse - diving robot that travel with NOAA’sOkeanos Explorer . Spotted 4,290 meters beneath the open , it ’s the deep observation of a so - calledincirrate octopusever , and it might be a new species .
For several years , theOkeanos Explorer — the only federally - funded US ship construct to search Earth ’s oceans purely for science — has been travel the public , deploy its ROVto shine a glare on some of the darkest box of the oceanfloor , andlive - streaming video footageto two - legged mammals with internet connexion . Along the way , the charge has let on atreasure troveof unknown andadorable creatures .
The first operational dive of 2016 , on February 27th , took Deep Discoverer to depths of over 4,000 beat nor'-east of Necker Island , Hawaii . The prima donna was intended to take in geologic information , not to discover Modern cephalopods .
But you never what you ’ll find at the ocean ’s boundless bottom . When Deep Discoverer came across this little bozo , it was chill all by its lonesome on a flat stone . In a blog mail , NOAA notes that while the creature is similar in appearance to common shallow water incirrate ( un - finned ) octopods , it has several strange trait , include fool in one rather than two serial on each arm , and a distinct want of muscle quality . Most notably , it lacks the chromatophore pigments that permit most octopi to change colouring .
“ It is almost certainly an undescribed species,”NOAA writes , “ and may not belong to any described genus . ”
Not only is this pallid pinkish passel of flubber further trial impression thatPokémon live on among us , it ’s another reminder that we ’re tremendously ignorant about life in the cryptical sea .
[ NOAAviaMotherboard ]
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