Red Sea Yields Discovery of a New Type of Moray Eel - It’s UGLY!

POSTED BY QBert on Jan 29 under Just Plain Weird, Science/Tech

The sheer volume of life in the ocean boggles the mind. We’ve been to the moon, sent rovers to Mars, and probes beyond the limits of our own galaxy, yet our own oceans continue to reveal secret after secret, while still remaining ever more mysterious with each new secret divulged. If you are on the internet even 1/3 as much as I am, you’ve no doubt seen one of the numerous “weird fish” collections floating around, and you either were astounded, or assumed the completely foreign looking fishy in front of you looked more like a character from the movie Alien than it did any fish you’d ever seen before.

Well, it seems yet another bizarre creature of the sea has been discovered. A new species of moray eel, newly named Gymnothorax Baranesi, was found at a depth of 200, in a thought to be well studied area, and very close to a major marine laboratory! Now, take a look at the pictures.

ugly eel oh lovely an ugly eel

Just look at it’s face. Is that a face? Not one that I want to come in contact with, that’s for sure. Those teeth sure look like they weren’t meant for munching on sea cucumbers alone. I can imagine a whole race of aliens with faces like these.

Moray eels are normally found around the world in tropical and subtropical waters. The variety within the species is wide and morays are indeed commonly collected from similar coral reefs, but many species live in deeper, more mysterious waters, where they are rarely collected.

These uglies were collected from a depth of approximately 200 metres off Eilat, in the northern Red Sea. They could not be identified with any known species.

(link)