Question: Have you found any new types of sea-animal? If you have, which one is your favourite?

Jon Copley answered on 16 Jun 2010:

Yes – my colleagues and I have recently found new species of shrimp, crab, sea snails, sea anemones, barnacles, and deep-sea fish. But because it can take a long time to prepare the “official” description of a new species, we actually have a backlog there to work through.

When you come across an animal at a depth of more than 3000 metres (and most of the ocean floor is deeper than that), there’s actually a 50 percent chance that it will be a new species, because we know so little at the moment about what lives down there.

My favourite at the moment, though, is “the one that got away”. Earlier this year, in the deep ocean near Antarctica, we came across an animal called an “enteropneust”, and it was very likely a new species, but we couldn’t actually catch one to check and prepare a description.

Enteropneusts have worm-like bodies, but then they have a big “collar” at their necks, and then a separate-looking head. They snake about at the bottom of the ocean, leaving very distinctive trails on the seafloor. They are probably distant relatives of animals like sea stars and sea urchins, but not much is known about them because they are rarely seen by humans (and that’s why I like them – because we don’t know much about them). Some of them can grow to five feet long.

We’re going back to the area where we saw the enteropneust on another expedition early next year, so maybe this time we’ll manage to collect one to examine, and find out if it is a new species. In the meantime, here’s a photo of the one that got away – I realise it’s not a great photo, because we only got a glimpse of it: