Ugly blob fish11/6/2023 ![]() The best-known blobfish specimen was found by a research vessel, NORFANZ, in 2003 and is preserved at the Australian Museum. Blobfish, however, die at the air pressure levels at sea level, and, therefore, remain elusively underphotographed. Most specimens encountered by humans are dead ones discarded by deep-sea fishing trawlers that use nets to sweep up marine animals from the bottom of the ocean in an effort to catch edible fish. ![]() Thanks to that, it floats slightly above the floor of the ocean, where it waits for small crustaceans and other edible matter to pass by so it can suck them up for food.īecause blobfish are found only in a few areas of the world and at depths between 2,000 and 4,000 feet below the surface of the water, they are rarely encountered live. Instead, its body is jelly-like, with a density slightly lower than the water in which it lives. However, that doesn't mean that the blobfish just sinks to the ocean bottom. It has soft bones and few muscles and lacks a swim bladder, the gas-filled internal organ that allows most bony fish to control their ability to stay afloat in water. I’m encouraged by the number of online comments defending the blobfish as cute, but I wish animals didn’t have to be cute to be valued.The blobfish ( Psychrolutes marcidus) is a foot-long pink fish found in the deep waters off the coasts of Australia and New Zealand. (Blobfish may be in danger from trawling.) Most of the other “ugliest” contenders were “ichs and herps,” as biologists say - reptiles, fish and amphibians. People care more about saving big-eyed mammals than melted-looking fish. What’s this fascination with ugly animals really about, anyway? The ugly-animal contest champions the world’s less biophilic endangered creatures with the premise that “the panda gets too much attention.” The contest is sponsored by a comedy team, but their joke is funny because it’s true. In the end, the question of whether the blobfish is cute or not just begs another question. Blobby photo, can easily be mistaken for more samples of real blobfish, giving the impression that all blobfish look like Mr. Photos of the replicas, which are quite true to the famous Mr. An artist sculpted a model from plasticine, then used a mold of the sculpture to create silicone replicas of Mr. © SEA SERPENTĪnother thing to be aware of: A number of the blobfish photos on the Internet are not of real fish. Subscribe An underwater rover captured a photo of the plump blobfish. occidentalis, and it too is a plump but pretty cute little guy: There are few photos of living blobfish of any species, but an underwater rover captured one of P. His research paper in the Japanese Journal of Ichthyology describes the fish as having a limp body with soft bones and thin, loose skin. ![]() Fricke first described the blobfish Psychrolutes occidentalis from Western Australia in 1990. “Species of Psychrolutes have very weak, barely ossified bones, so they look bloblike even in life,” says ichthyologist Ronald Fricke of the Staatliches Museum in Stuttgart. Alan Riverstone McCulloch/Wikimedia Commons Blobby’s melted appearance: Drawings of blobfish show them as much more fishlike. ![]() But up at the surface the fish seem jellylike and basically collapse, distorting their features.Īlive and at proper pressure, P. That makes sense for an animal that lives in the crushing pressures of the deep sea, allowing the fish to compress without cracking their bones. Blobfish don’t have swim bladders but do have very soft bones. Fish with gas-filled swim bladders undergo rapid expansion of the bladder that could push their internal organs out through their mouths. Most blobfish are found quite deep, 300 meters or more, meaning that they can be subject to severe decompression when researchers haul them to the surface. Blobby’s remains, the fish was trawled during the NORFANZ expedition at a depth of more than a kilometer. The 11 known species of Psychrolutes are found blobbing along temperate seafloors worldwide.Īccording to the Australian Museum in Sydney, which houses Mr. Blobby is from the genus Psychrolutes in the family Psychrolutidae, known as blobfishes or fathead sculpins, and is possibly a smooth-head blobfish, Psycholutes marcidus. ![]()
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