The scientists who found the first unknown creature work for the Ocean Exploration Trust project and have published their report in the journal Invertebrate Systematics, and Live Science has a brief description of it. Other researchers are from the Natural History Museum of Great Britain. They described a number of animals, including sea cucumbers, and published their work on ZooKeys.

a flower or a stem

The first group of scientists aboard the Nautilus on a research mission at a depth of 2,994 meters noticed something resembling a floating flower. On July 7, a strange object was discovered in an underwater mountain area in the Pacific Ocean near the Hawaiian Islands. This place is no longer visited as it was previously studied.

Researchers say they’ve never seen anything like it, despite being experts in underwater world research. There are two versions of the description of what he saw:

• According to one of them, they are lucky to discover a new animal species deep in the sea.
• Another explanation suggests it is a species of Solumbellula monocephalus called the “sea pen”. It is close to the inhabitants of the depths, such as jellyfish, corals and hydras.

If the second version is correct, then the Nautilus researchers will not be disappointed, however, because the observations of the “hands” were of a singular nature and were made in the waters of the Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Thus, they will be the first to see representatives of this species in the Pacific Ocean.

Filmed on camera of an unknown type: video

Dozens of new species

In the latter case, experts from the Natural History Museum of Great Britain used a remote-controlled device to collect samples in the central Pacific Ocean. According to the report, 48 of the 55 samples found belonged to different species.

• Animals found include segmented worms, invertebrates from the same family as centipedes, jellyfish-like marine animals, and various coral species.
• Found 36 on the slope of an underwater mountain at a depth of more than 4.8 thousand meters, two – at a depth of 4.1 thousand meters, and at a depth of 17 – from 3 to 3.5 thousand meters.

One sea cucumber species Psychropotes verrucicaudatus (1), deep sea starfish Freyastera tuberculata (2), sea cucumber Psychronaetes (3), one unidentified species (4), another sea cucumber (5), one sea cucumber Peniagone vitrea (6) and a sea cucumber hedgehog species Kamptosoma abyssale (7): Photo by ZooKeys

This study is important not only because of the number of potentially new species discovered, but also because these megafauna specimens have previously only been studied from seafloor images. Without samples and the DNA data they contain, we cannot accurately describe animals and understand how many different species there are.
Lead author of the study, Dr. Says Guadalupe Bribesca-Contreras.

Scientists are still working on this research, trying to identify and describe all the species found.