It's pink, slimy, googly-eyed and, apparently, misunderstood.
That's according to scientist Andrew Stewart, who discovered the curious new species of fish shown in the photo above during the filming of "Expedition Antarctica," a documentary following researchers through the bitter cold of the southern continent, released last month on YouTube. (Skip ahead to the 14:30 mark to check the fish out).
"That's why I came to Antarctica, to see things like this," Stewart said in the film. "It's beyond words."
Turns out this little gross guy is a type of snailfish, a tadpool-looking creature that confounds scientists due to its home in the icy depths of the Arctic and Antarctic oceans.
Despite their gelatinous bodies, which look transparent, rubbery, and thin, snailfish can live in depths of up to at least 700 meters based on the species we know of today.
There are over 400 types of snailfish that have been found, and countless more that remain undocumented. Any temperature over 5 degrees Celsius is too hot for these ice fish, Stewart said. That's partly why they remain so mysterious.
Over the years, scientists have continued to uncover more cousins of the snailfish, including a blue winged snailfish that was found in 2017 and a pink snailfish that's been dubbed the Mariana snailfish due to its home in the cavernous deep sea trench in the western Pacific Ocean.
Stewart's snailfish has its own quirk, beside its huge eyes, which look a bit like a goldfish: a harder ridge of tissue along the fins with unusual markings.
"That color pattern is like nothing I've ever seen before," he said.
