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Ducibella camanchaca is a newly discovered crustacean that lives in the deep, hadal zone of the Atacama Trench. Credit: Johanna Weston, ©Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
It’s harder to imagine a more hostile environment on Earth than the ocean’s hadal zone. Named after Hades, the Greek god of the Underworld, the hadal zone is the deepest part of the ocean, located about 3.7 to 6.8 miles below sea level in marine trenches. Not only is it pitch black, but the organisms living there must withstand intense pressure, which also makes it challenging for researchers to explore. It’s no wonder that scientists know so little about the creatures that manage to survive in these conditions.
But that hasn’t stopped researchers from exploring—and discovering new species, such as a ghostly white predator named for the darkness it inhabits. A team of scientists from the U.S. and Chile recently discovered a crustacean that is not only a new species, but is a whole new genus, one step higher than species in the classification of organisms. They named it Dulcibella camanchaca, two words that mean “darkness” in the languages of indigenous people from the Andes Mountains. While it lives in darkness, Dulcibella camanchaca’s whole body is an eerie, milky white. And though it only measures about 4 centimeters long—just about an inch and a half—this fast-swimming predator certainly looks frightening enough, with its elongated, snout-like head and the specialized appendages it uses to snatch prey.
The discovery occurred during an expedition aboard the research vessel Abate Molina with scientists from the Instituto Milenio de Oceanografía in Chile and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod. They collected four Dulcibella specimens at nearly 5 miles (7,902 meters) deep in the Atacama Trench, which lies in the Pacific Ocean about 100 miles off the Peru-Chile coast. Trench expeditions are continuing, so it remains to be seen what researchers will find next in those mysterious hadal depths.
