A New Predator Has Emerged From the Deepest, Darkest Part of the Ocean

The Atacama Trench, located off the coast of Peru and Chile, is one of the deepest oceanic regions on our planet, and scientists think it could be an ecological haven.
A new study describes a four centimeter crustacean predator that survives at around 8,000 meters deep—well into what’s known as the Hadal zone.
Genomic testing has confirmed that this isn’t just a new species—it’s also a new genus, which further confirms that other forms of life might be hiding in this fascinating part of the unexplored ocean.

On October 14, 2024, NASA’s Europa Clipper launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for Jupiter’s fourth largest moon. Its mission is to assess the moon’s potential to host life in the vast ocean beneath its icy crust. While the Europa Clipper is a milestone in humanity’s ability to study the oceans of other worlds, Earth’s oceans still hold many mysteries yet unsolved by science.

Without leaving Earth, scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI) and the Universidad de Concepción in Chile have discovered new life themselves—a previously unknown, active predator in one of the deepest trenches in the world. Four specimens were collected nearly 8,000 meters below sea level (which is almost as deep as Mount Everest is tall), and scientists named the crustacean “Dulcibella camanchaca”—a reference to the word for “darkness” in the languages of peoples living in the Andes region.

Although its white carapace gives it a ghostly, almost Facehugger-from-Alien feel, the name is fitting if you consider that this predator lives out its life 7,000 meters below the aphotic zone, where absolute darkness reigns. The researchers described this new species late last month in the journal Systematics and Biodiversity.

The Atacama Trench, also known as the Peru-Chile Trench, stretches about 3700 miles (6,000 kilometers) along the coast. However, off the coast of northern Chile, the trench plunges to almost 25,246 ft (8,000 m) below the surface—well within the deepest part of the ocean, known as the Hadal zone.

Scientists have long been interested in exploring this zone, and the discoveries haven’t disappointed. In 2023, the Instituto Milenio de Oceanografía (IMO)—based at Universidad de Concepción in Chile—carried out a deep ocean survey aboard the research vessel Abate Molina, which was originally donated to Chile by the Japanese government in the early 90s. Once the specimens were recovered, they were frozen for preservation and subsequently underwent genomic analysis.

“Most excitingly, the DNA and morphology data pointed to this species being a new genus too, emphasizing the Atacama Trench as an endemic hotspot,” Johanna Weston, lead author of the study and expert on the Hadal zone from WHOI, said in a press statement.

True to its Alien-like appearance, D. camanchaca has a spine-tingling way of devouring its prey—using its raptorial appendages to essentially clamp down on other, smaller crustaceans. (Remind you of anything?) Because of its deep ocean environment, this mighty crustacean, which is only roughly four centimeters in length, can also withstand pressures up to 800 times stronger than pressures found on land.

“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. “More discoveries are expected as we continue to study the Atacama Trench.”

If something so small can persevere in conditions as adverse as those in the Hadal zone, maybe Europa Clipper has a non-zero shot at finding conditions that could support life in the vast, salty ocean of a whole different world.