Biologists at the University of Washington in Seattle have discovered a new fish in Indonesia they suspect could be tens of millions of years old. Anchor Marco Werman has details.
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MARCO WERMAN: Some biologists at the University of Washington in Seattle are doing work in a warmer climate. They're studying a strange new species of fish that may be tens of millions of years old. It was discovered last summer off the remote island of Ambon, in Indonesia. The fish is about five inches long. It has a broad, flat face, thick fleshy cheeks, and eyes that look straight out like a human's. It's also orange with white and blue strips radiating from its blue eyes. That made an impression on Ted Pietsch, a Biologist at the University of Washington.
TED PIETSCH: When I saw pictures, I said, “Man, this is psychedelic!†It just looks like all the swirling lines and stripes that you sort of see in psychedelic art.
WERMAN: So this fish was given the scientific name?
PIETSCH: Histiophryene Psychedelica.
WERMAN: That's Histiophryene Psychedelica. But Pietsch's team has a nickname for it.
PIETSCH: Well, we call him Psycho.
WERMAN: Pietsch says some scuba divers in Indonesian waters spotted it and sent him a photo. He dispatched a team to bring back a specimen of the fish. It turns out this psychedelic fish is a frogfish that can bounce along the ocean floor. When you look at it carefully, you can see that its fins look like paws with tiny fingers.
PIETSCH: They're called pectoral fins.
WERMAN: And the fish uses them like arms. Pietsch says the fins are good for walking so the little fish can crawl and hang on to rocks.
PIETSCH: So it certainly walks more, but when it's up in the water, that is, away from the bottom, it's jet-propelling.
WERMAN: And here's how it does that.
PIETSCH: It's little gill openings might only be like a quarter of an inch or maybe an eighth of an inch in diameter. So they form little tubes so that when they take in water, they can force that water back out these little tube-like openings, and that shoots them along.
WERMAN: Pietsch's team published their findings in the February issue of the journal Culpea.
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