READ

Monster fish of the deep

Do bugs gross you out? You haven’t seen anything yet. To get some really weird creatures, you’ve got to look in the deep sea.
Alex Dook
Alex Dook
Freelance writer
Monster fish of the deep
Image credit: Holder, Charles Frederick, 1851 – 1915

Do insects make your skin crawl? What about snakes? There are some seriously gross critters around, but if you think a creepy-looking bug is the worst of it, you’re wrong. It gets much weirder.

Enter the black loosejaw, winner of Particle’s inaugural WTF (Weirdly Talented Fish) Award.

View Larger

Black loosejaw—not exactly a pretty face

Image credit: Natural History Museum
Black loosejaw—not exactly a pretty face

With huge fangs, an enormous mouth gape and jaws like the arms of a praying mantis, the black loosejaw isn’t exactly cute and cuddly. But it’s not just its looks that make it scary—the black loosejaw has a special ability that gives it an amazing advantage over other critters down in the deep.

Check out the black loosejaw, also known as the stoplight loosejaw up close and thankfully, not in the water

Video credit: caricaricari10
Check out the black loosejaw, also known as the stoplight loosejaw up close and thankfully, not in the water

SEEING RED

“The black loosejaw can shine a light on prey that most other deep sea animals can’t see,” says Dianne Bray, Senior Collection Manager of Vertebrate Zoology, Museums Victoria.

“It’s like they have a secret weapon, akin to hunting with night-vision goggles.”

If this ability sounds other-worldly, that’s because it is. The black loosejaw lives in the twilight zone—that dark part of the ocean between 200 and 1000 metres below the surface. The twilight zone is so different to our own environment, you may as well be talking about an alien planet.

“In the deep ocean, colours appear very different to how we see them at the surface. Long wavelength light, especially the colour red, doesn’t penetrate very far into the ocean—it’s absorbed in near-surface waters,” says Dianne.

“Lots of animals living in the twilight zone are red, including jellyfishes, crustaceans and even some fishes.”

“Because very few predators are able to see the colour red, red animals are well camouflaged in the deep sea,” says Dianne.

“Being red is a great way for fish to hide in the dark twilight zone.”

RED IS THE NEW BLACK—IN THE DEEP SEA

The redvelvet whalefish is one example of a deep-sea red fish that is essentially invisible to almost all other critters in the deep sea.

Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute come across a redvelvet whalefish at 1,479 meters. These are some of the first images of this fish.

Video credit: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI)
Researchers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute come across a redvelvet whalefish at 1,479 meters. These are some of the first images of this fish.

The black loosejaw, though, not only can see red light but can also produce it. It has a special light organ and can shine a red light and hunt for food while hiding from potential predators.

But how can the black loosejaw see red when other creatures can’t? No one knows for sure, but one theory is the black loosejaw evolved this remarkable ability from snacking on tiny critters called copepods.

EAT YOUR … COPEPODS?

“Copepods are found all across the ocean. It’s thought that, by eating them, the black loosejaw is ingesting the chemicals and bacteria it needs to develop eyes that are sensitive to red light.”

View Larger

Copepods—delicious and nutritious

Image credit: Wikimedia Commons
Copepods—delicious and nutritious

But that’s only one theory. We won’t learn more until we spend some more time down in the deep ocean with the other monsters of the deep.

Any takers?

Alex Dook
About the author
Alex Dook
Raised by a physics teacher and a university professor, Alex had no choice but to be a science nerd. He has worked in science communication in both Perth and Melbourne, mainly setting things on fire for delighted children. Alex is now a freelance science writer and content creator.
View articles
Raised by a physics teacher and a university professor, Alex had no choice but to be a science nerd. He has worked in science communication in both Perth and Melbourne, mainly setting things on fire for delighted children. Alex is now a freelance science writer and content creator.
View articles

NEXT ARTICLE

We've got chemistry, let's take it to the next level!

Get the latest WA science news delivered to your inbox, every fortnight.

Republish

Creative Commons Logo

Republishing our content

We want our stories to be shared and seen by as many people as possible.

Therefore, unless it says otherwise, copyright on the stories on Particle belongs to Scitech and they are published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

This allows you to republish our articles online or in print for free. You just need to credit us and link to us, and you can’t edit our material or sell it separately.

Using the ‘republish’ button on our website is the easiest way to meet our guidelines.

Guidelines

You cannot edit the article.

When republishing, you have to credit our authors, ideally in the byline. You have to credit Particle with a link back to the original publication on Particle.

If you’re republishing online, you must use our pageview counter, link to us and include links from our story. Our page view counter is a small pixel-ping (invisible to the eye) that allows us to know when our content is republished. It’s a condition of our guidelines that you include our counter. If you use the ‘republish’ then you’ll capture our page counter.

If you’re republishing in print, please email us to let us so we know about it (we get very proud to see our work republished) and you must include the Particle logo next to the credits. Download logo here.

If you wish to republish all our stories, please contact us directly to discuss this opportunity.

Images

Most of the images used on Particle are copyright of the photographer who made them.

It is your responsibility to confirm that you’re licensed to republish images in our articles.

Video

All Particle videos can be accessed through YouTube under the Standard YouTube Licence.

The Standard YouTube licence

  1. This licence is ‘All Rights Reserved’, granting provisions for YouTube to display the content, and YouTube’s visitors to stream the content. This means that the content may be streamed from YouTube but specifically forbids downloading, adaptation, and redistribution, except where otherwise licensed. When uploading your content to YouTube it will automatically use the Standard YouTube licence. You can check this by clicking on Advanced Settings and looking at the dropdown box ‘License and rights ownership’.
  2. When a user is uploading a video he has license options that he can choose from. The first option is “standard YouTube License” which means that you grant the broadcasting rights to YouTube. This essentially means that your video can only be accessed from YouTube for watching purpose and cannot be reproduced or distributed in any other form without your consent.

Contact

For more information about using our content, email us: particle@scitech.org.au

Copy this HTML into your CMS
Press Ctrl+C to copy