Small blue an octopus that lives in the deep sea off the Galapagos Islands is so tiny it can fit in the palm of your hand. As announced in the recent issue by a team of researchers coordinated by Chicago’s Field Museum test just published in the journal Zootaxa, it now has an official name –Microeledon galapagensis.
The octopus was first spotted in 2015 during a deep-sea expedition aboard a research vessel E/V Nautilus. From there, marine biologists used a remotely operated underwater vehicle (RoV) to explore the ocean floor near Darwin Island, at the northern tip of the Galapagos archipelago. As the RoV camera panned across the seafloor near an underwater slope at a depth of 1,773 meters (5,817 feet), it spotted a diminutive octopus with a dynamic blue color.
After a thorough inspection, scientists were able to recover the blue octopus and film two other specimens, before conducting a thorough analysis at the end of the mission. However, it confused them because they weren’t sure what species it belonged to. So they contacted Field Museum expert Janet Voight and sent her a photo of the animal. “I knew right away that it was something really special.” he said Voight, lead author of the recent study. “I’ve never seen anything like this.” However, determining whether an animal belongs to a recent species requires a complete analysis of all its body parts, and since the blue octopus was the only one of its kind ever collected, experts did not want to dissect it and thus lose such a valuable specimen.
To overcome this problem, the authors used X-ray computed tomography to create and assemble thousands of CT microscans, which then allowed them to create a 3D model of the blue octopus, both internally and externally. Scientists were able to observe the smallest details, from the tentacles (squat, with a few suction cups), to the velvety skin (almost devoid of pigment on the back), to the specific funnel-shaped organ, thus obtaining the information needed to classify it as a recent species and place it among other cephalopods. “Because CT imaging is non-destructive, it is especially important for samples like this one,” he added. he said co-author Stephanie Smith. “And that’s great for me because people often bring me these incredibly rare and stunningly beautiful specimens, which I have the honor of opening virtually.”
In addition to describing a recent species, the blue octopus reminds us how much we still don’t know about the deep oceans, how vital these expeditions and research are to better understand these still unexplored ecosystems and why their protection is so vital.
“They’re little octopuses that live in the deep sea and almost no one on Earth has seen them. I’m just glad I got to work with them,” Voight said. “If you took all the land on Earth and put it together, you wouldn’t cover the Pacific Ocean. The oceans are so big that there is still so much to discover.”
This story originally appeared on WIRED Italy and was translated from Italian.