Given how underexplored the Pacific Ocean is, it is not surprising that new species are being discovered every time a manned or unmanned deep-water submersible is launched to document the species living in the deepest parts of the ocean. With only a small fraction of the Pacific mapped or recorded on video, there is a concern that some species may disappear long before they are ever seen by humans.
One of the more recent discoveries from the Pacific Ocean is a creature belonging to the coral and jellyfish family. While different types of the species had been seen in the Atlantic Ocean and Indian Ocean, 2022 marked the first time the sea creatures were ever spotted in the Pacific. Now, research is ongoing to determine whether the Solumbellula has migrated to the warm waters of the Pacific or if this is an entirely new species of the highly variable sea pen.
What Is the Solumbellula?
The Solumbellula was first discovered in the Pacific Ocean near the Johnston Atoll in 2022.
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A Solumbellula or a sea pen is a deep-water sea creature that is in the same family as corals and jellyfish. Just like these other species, sea pens vary in size and what they look like. Some have what appear to be feather-like quills, akin to feather pens of old, while others look more like jellyfish, given their tentacles.
What all sea pens have in common is that they are attached to the sea floor via a peduncle in temperate ocean waters. This allows the sea pens to remain securely in place as their tentacles search for food in the ocean. Additionally, while sea pens all come in different colors, another commonality is that they are bioluminescent. Interestingly, there is no practical reason for sea pens to be bioluminescent. The food they eat is not attracted to light, and the predators that would consume them do not need light to see. Consequently, research is still ongoing to determine the reason for the bioluminescence.
Where the Solumbellula Normally Lives
The Solumbellula or sea pens are typically located in the North and South Atlantic as well as the Indian Ocean.
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Up until 2022, it was believed that Solumbellula only lived in the North and South Atlantic as well as the Indian Ocean. This is because both the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean are better explored than the Pacific. Consequently, there is a vast amount of the Pacific that has yet to be mapped, meaning the biodiversity that exists at the bottom of the ocean is still waiting to be uncovered.
What is interesting about the Solumbellula is that in February 2022, a study was published in Invertebrate Systematics in which the Solumbellula monocephalus species was first discovered. The specimen was located off the coast of Spain in the Atlantic. While the Solumbellula found in the Pacific Ocean appears to be similar to the one discovered in the Atlantic Ocean, it is unclear whether they are indeed one and the same. Therefore, scientists are working to determine if this is the first Solumbellula found in the Pacific or if it is a different type of Solumbellula altogether.
How Scientists Found the Solumbellula
The Solumbellula was discovered in 2022 as NOAA worked to learn more about the deep-water creatures that live in the Pacific Ocean.
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NOAA scientists set off on an expedition in 2022 to discover more about the biodiversity that existed in the Johnston Atoll. This was done as the atoll was one of the most underexplored regions of the Pacific Ocean. With climate change putting species throughout all oceans at risk of disappearing, NOAA acted swiftly to begin exploration.
The goals NOAA had in place for the expedition, which ran from June 20 to July 15, 2022, and was funded by Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute, were significant. Those goals included:
Conducting surveys of the density and diversity of deep-water corals, sponges, and fish habitats
Collecting dissolved oxygen and eDNA samples
Collecting rock samples to identify mineral crusts, allowing scientists to properly date the region
It was while the scientists were searching for deep-water creatures that they encountered not one, but two different Solumbellula subjects. While the details of the second sea pen were not made public, the first the scientists came across while using an ROV was a 6.6-foot-long specimen. The sea pen was located at a depth of over 9,800 feet below the surface of the ocean near a seamount that had never been explored.
The sea pen had a “single feeding polyp” complete with barbed tentacles. As the YouTube video explains, the tentacles grab “food particles” in the ocean and then bring the particles to the mouth in the middle of the sea pen. Given that two of these sea pens were discovered in 2022, scientists wanted to move quickly to map the region and uncover if there were more sea pens and other creatures in the depths of the Pacific Ocean’s most underexplored areas.
More Research Is Needed
With a Solumbellula being discovered in Spain months before the one in the Pacific was found, research is ongoing to determine if they are the same species or not.
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The location of the discovery of the Solumbellula in the deeper parts of the Pacific Ocean has not been well explored. While the Johnston Atoll is now a protected National Wildlife Refuge, there is still a great deal that scientists do not know about the region. Consequently, this means little is known about the Solumbellula in the region as well.
During the dive, scientists found two different types of sea pens in the Johnston Atoll. While these are the first examples of sea pens in the Pacific Ocean, scientists recognize that there is still more information to be gathered before they can make any determinations about what brought the sea pens to the Pacific Ocean and whether the discovered specimens are existing sea pens or new species.
“Further review of the footage and this sample will help experts determine if this is the first Pacific S.monocephalus or potentially a new species in this ocean basin,” researchers say in the caption of their YouTube footage.
In 2024, NOAA had a goal of unlocking more secrets in and around the Johnston Atoll. This undertaking meant mapping the ocean floor from areas of Northern California to the Hawaiian Islands from April 2024 to November 2024. This resulted in 55% of the region surrounding the Hawaiian Islands being mapped. However, the results of the discovery of more sea pens and other marine life are still pending.
The post Rare Deep Sea Creature Discovered in the Pacific Ocean appeared first on A-Z Animals.
