Smithsonian Scientists Discover New Species of Scorpionfish

By: Sarah Sharkey

What a week! Discovering new species simply confirms how little we know about our oceans.

Smithsonian scientists had the good fortune of being invited on Adriaan “Dutch” Schrier’s five-person submersible that he had built for roughly $2 million dollars after he realized that his body could no longer take the deep water dives that he loved.

After building this impressive submersible, he had access to deeper Caribbean waters and realized that there were a ton of species that he didn’t recognize after an era of shallower dives.

With this newfound freedom to explore a new depth of the Caribbean, excited scientists went in search of new things off the coast of Curacao. The area they are exploring is only about a tenth of a square mile, but they have already discovered over 50 new species of fish and invertebrates.

And these discoveries are only in the small plot of water that they are exploring! This means there are probably more species just waiting to be discovered.

The species that they just announced is Scorpaenodes barrybrowni. The family of Scorpaenodes is composed of 30 species that typically have defensive spines that are capable of injecting venom.

Lionfish are a more commonly known relative of the scorpion fish.  The species name barrybrowni was chosen for the photographer of the project who is very dedicated to his job.

Schrier and the scientists onboard his vessel are collecting valuable information and discovering a new layer of species diversity in the depths of the Caribbean.

We’ll keep a close eye on this project.

Read more from our source here.

Featured image source.