A New Predator Emerging From the Deep

SCIENTISTS AT WOODS HOLE OCEANO-graphic Institute (WHOI) and the Universidad de Concepción in Chile have discovered new life—a previously unknown, active predator in one of the deepest trenches in the world.

- D.O.

Four specimens were collected nearly 8,000 meters below sea level, and scientists named the crustacean Dulcibella camanchaca—a reference to the word for “darkness” in the languages of peoples living in the Andes region.

Although its white carapace gives it a ghostly look, the name is fitting if you consider that this predator lives out its life 7,000 meters below the aphotic zone, where absolute darkness reigns. The researchers described this new species in the journal Systematics and Biodiversity.