New species of damselfish discovered in deep-sea coral reefs of Maldives

[Still Waters]

A small team of ichthyologists at the California Academy of Sciences has discovered a new species of damselfish living off the shores of the Maldives. In their paper published in the journal ZooKeys, the group describes how they found multiple examples of the fish while on an expedition that involved exploring deep-sea coral reefs off the coast of the Maldives—an island chain in the Indian Ocean, southwest of India—and features of the newly discovered fish.

The new species was discovered as the team used hand nets to capture, identify and release fish living on and around the deep-sea corals. In contrast to shallow coral reefs, the researchers point out that deep-sea reefs are poorly studied, particularly those in the Indian Ocean, the eastern Atlantic and the eastern Pacific. Thus, it was no great surprise for them to find a species of fish that had not been classified before. The team named it Chromis abadhah as a nod to the funders of the project.

https://phys.org/news/2024-12-species-damselfish-deep-sea-coral.html

[Lucia62]

Very pretty Thankyou.