Predator discovered 26,246 feet deep inside the ocean is only 4 centimetres long
&imwidth=800&imheight=600&format=webp&quality=medium "Predator discovered 26,246 feet deep inside the ocean is only 4 centimetres long")
Representative image of ocean predator
The tiny predator is a crustacean that spends its entire life at depths where it is always dark. It uses a killer method to overpower its prey.
Scientists in Chile have discovered a tiny predator living 26,246 feet below the surface of the ocean. The Atacama Trench, also known as the Peru-Chile Trench, is one of the deepest trenches known to man. This region is completely dark, and this predator lives its entire life nestled here.
The predator is a crustacean that has been named "Dulcibella camanchaca" and is only four centimetres long.
Since it lives at such a deep point in the ocean, it can withstand pressures up to 800 times stronger than pressures found on land. The name translates to "darkness" in the local language of the people in the Andes. Researchers published details about the discovery in the journal Systematics and Biodiversity.
The Atacama Trench runs for 6,000 kilometres along the coast. However, it plunges even further, to almost 25,246 ft off the coast of northern Chile. This is within the deepest part of the ocean, known as the Hadal zone.
The samples of the crustacean were discovered in this region in 2023. Researchers at the Instituto Milenio de Oceanografía (IMO)—based at Universidad de Concepción in Chile- carried out a deep ocean survey and pulled out samples of the predator. They were frozen and later studied through genomic analysis.
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The "DNA and morphology data pointed to this species being a new genus," researchers wrote in the study. Johanna Weston, lead author of the study and expert on the Hadal zone from WHOI, said in a statement that this indicates "the Atacama Trench is an endemic hotspot."
D. camanchaca not only looks like an alien, but also hunts in the most horrifying and violent way. It has raptorial appendages, limb-like features that it uses to grasp its prey. It swoops in with it and holds down smaller crustaceans to kill them.
“This finding underlines the importance of continued deep-ocean exploration, particularly in Chile’s front yard,” IMO’s Carolina González, co-lead author of the study, said in a press statement.
Scientists plan to conduct more studies in the Atacama Trench. Finding a new creature once again proves that there is a lot more that is hiding in the heart of the world's oceans.