Why Is the New deep Sea Octopus So Pale?
by Katherine Harmon
Recent expeditions to Antarctic seafloor vents have yielded haunting new images of hairy-bellied yeti crabs, a seven-armed starfish and an eerily pale octopus—its curling arms encased in almost translucent skin.
This octopus, along with the dives’ other finds, were documented via ROV (remotely operated vehicle) and described earlier this week in PLoS Biology.
“The first survey of these particular vents, in the Southern Ocean near Antarctica, has revealed a hot, dark, ‘lost world’ in which whole communities of previously unknown marine organisms thrive,” Alex Rogers, a professor in Oxford University’s zoology department who led the team, said in a prepared statement…
(read more: Scientific American) (image: Oxford Univ.)
