31 New Marine Species Discovered in Just Two Weeks

An international marine biology expedition has discovered 31 new species in just two weeks in international waters off the coast of Brazil. Researchers believe the speed of discovery and identification may be record-breaking, thanks in part to advanced technology designed and built by the scientific and engineering team.

The expedition, comprising 24 international experts from the U.S., Australia, Brazil, and Japan, conducted surveys aboard the research vessel Falkor (too), operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute with support from the University of Western Australia and other organizations. They departed from Salvador, Bahia, focusing on the midwater zone — the area between the seafloor and the sunlit layer. Researchers say this is the largest habitat on Earth, covering 90% of the planet's living space, and also one of the least explored.

Among the new discoveries are: an amphipod species (crustaceans related to crabs and lobsters); a fast-moving gossamer worm; nine jellyfish species; seven siphonophore species (colonial organisms related to jellyfish and corals); seven ctenophore species (comb jellies, famous for shimmering cilia used for swimming); four larvacean species (tadpole-like creatures living in mucus houses, more closely related to humans than invertebrates); and two giant rhizarian species (single-celled organisms visible to the naked eye).

“It’s exciting,” said Dr. Karen Osborn, chief scientist of the expedition from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “The midwater is full of incredible animals that we don’t know much about. And this area had never been explored before, so there were many opportunities to find new species. This is probably near a record for discovering new animals in a short time.”

A key technological breakthrough was the use of a spinning-disk confocal microscope aboard the ship, nicknamed Squid, which uses lasers to scan microscopic details of organism structures. “This opens up a whole new world of discovery. We can see cells interacting, exchanging materials, and building skeletons. And we can do it directly on the ship, whereas normally it takes weeks of staining and mounting to see it,” Osborn said.

Researchers also used a prototype imaging system, genetic analysis, and assembled a team of taxonomic experts to rapidly identify species.

The discovery contributes to human understanding of the distribution of life in the ocean. “I think of it like a layered cake. You often see the same thing at similar depths in distant places like Japan and California,” Osborn explained.

But there is also significant vertical movement at night, when creatures hidden deep during the day come closer to the surface to feed under cover of darkness. This has a major impact on the ocean’s carbon absorption process.

The expedition coincided with the Trump administration’s announcement of plans to dismantle one of the world’s most important deep-sea observation systems — the $368 million (278 million British pounds) Ocean Observatories Initiative, which uses more than 900 instruments to gather data on ocean health, including current patterns, climate change, and marine biodiversity.

Osborn said the latest expedition underscores the importance of scientific collaboration and learning more about the ocean. “I think we should do more of this. We need to bring together groups with shared goals to test new ways of seeing,” she said. “What humanity has found so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There is an immense amount of life out there solving life’s challenges in unusual ways. Imagine what we could learn from them as we understand them better.”