The blobfish has no real skeleton, and little muscles. Blobfish live in an extreme pressure environment and experience up to 120 times the pressure as on dry land.Īt this depth comparatively, human organs would be crushed under the sheer weight of pressure. Blobby’ by scientists and crew after being trawled during the NORFANZ expedition, on the Norfolk Ridge, north-west of New Zealand. The very first blobfish ever found was nicknamed ‘Mr. Yes, it’s real name is ‘Blobfish’, it’s not a nickname. Blobfish was first discovered in 2003, and immediately given it’s name. If I was out in space, blasted out of an airlock (a fish from 2000m experiences 200x this pressure change), dragged over the surface of the moon for kilometres (like fish are in nets) and then preserved in alcohol at very high gravity, I would look pretty ugly too! 3. We learned a lot from these specimens but it also influenced our opinion of deep-sea animals. They aren’t monsters or aliens, they are just animals shaped by very different conditions.Ī lot of our opinions about deep-sea fish stem from how we first discovered them, by dragging rough nets through thousands of meters of water. I think it’s important to look at deep-sea fish in the correct context. Thom Linley from the Newcastle University research team spoke to Fact Animal on the myth of the ‘ugly blobfish’ 4– When blobfish are dragged to the surface out of their natural environment in bottom trawling nets, they appear bulbous and gelatinous without water pressure to hold their shape. The exclusive photo below was supplied to Fact Animal from the Newcastle University research team, and was taken 1562m to the north of New Zealand on an expediation by Dr Alan Jamieson, a senior lecturer and marine ecology expert, specialising in deep and extreme environments. This pressured environment provides their gelatinous body mass with structural shape. The blobfish actually looks like a completely normal fish in its usual environment.Īt deep-sea, they look like a typical bony fish. However, the popular ‘ugly stereotype’ is rather misleading. The blobfish was resoundingly named as the ugliest animal alive with 795 votes of 3,000, beating the proboscis monkey, the aquatic scrotum frog, and pubic lice for the top spot ‘honour’. When the Ugly Animal Preservation Society needed a new mascot, they decided to put it to public vote. They were voted the worlds ugliest animal in a 2013 online poll. Little is known about the blobfish, as they are elusive and live in such deep waters of the ocean. Their diet mainly consists of microscopic bacteria, and sea creatures, such as urchins, shellfish, mollusks, crabs, lobsters and sea pens. This enables the blobfish to float above the sea floor, with their mouths open, sucking in any prey that floats or swims in their direction. The flesh of the blobfish is mainly a gelatinous mass with a density slightly less than water. They are members of the order Scorpaeniformes and family Psychrolutidae, which includes fatheads, fathead sculpins, and tadpole sculpins.īlobfish are pinkish grey in colour, and typically under 30cms (12 inches) in length, weighing around 20 pounds (9 kg). Sea urchins, shellfish, mollusks, crabs, lobsters, microscopic bacteria, sea pens. Coasts of Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand It’s the most common picture you’ll see of a blobfish, which resides in an Australian museum. The stereotype is also mainly from one single popular photo of a dead blobfish, that has experienced significant deformatity due to decompression. They have been described as the ugliest fish in the world, however, this popular impression is due to decompression damage to their jelly-like bodies, when out of their natural high pressure environment. The Blobfish (rather than ‘blob fish’) is a deep-sea fish which inhabits waters just above the sea bed at depths of 600 to 1,200 meters (2,000 to 3,900 feet), off the coasts of mainland Australia, New Zealand and Tasmania.
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