Featured Image Credit: Zoe Della Vedova
Finally, scientists have captured footage of the eerily beautiful and elusive ruby seadragon. In the same family as seahorses, the Phyllopteryx dewysea is one of three seadragon species recently discovered.
The ruby seadragon’s name is extraordinarily fitting since it is actually a bright red color. However, unlike its closest relatives, the common and leafy seadragons, it does not have any appendages for camouflaging.
A team of researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography (based out of San Diego, CA), set out on a mission last April to find the gem-like specimen. The crew ditched their Californian campus for the Recherche Archipelago in Western Australia. Apparently, this is the exact location where a male ruby seadragon was “reportedly” caught in a trawl net in 2007.
The team document and posted their journey on Tumblr: Hunt For The Ruby Seadragon.
Using an ROV, or remotely operated vehicle, the team scanned beneath the surface surrounding the Recherche Archipelago at a depth of about 150 feet. After several days of scouring for the Fantastic Beast-like creatures, not only did the crew manage to spot one of the rare ruby seadragons… but TWO! The creatures were swaying in the surge and feeding along the ocean floor.
Josefin Stiller is currently a graduate marine biology student at Scripps and she described the discovery to be an “amazing moment.”
In the YouTube Video above, Stiller said, “I fully expected that we knew all the sea dragon species that are out there. The discovery showed us that we can still find big, charismatic, bright red fish that no one has ever seen before.”
You can read the team’s newly published findings in the Marine Biodiveristy Records.