Researchers have discovered a new species of octopus in the deep sea of the Galápagos archipelago, according to a newly published paper.
The tiny blue octopus, Microeledone galapagensis, was first spotted during a 2015 deep-sea expedition exploring the ocean floor near Darwin Island, which sits at the northern edge of the Galápagos archipelago.
Recordings from the mission document the scientists' enthusiasm: "He's tiny" and "It's blue," they noted as their first impressions. During the expedition, two more specimens were observed, and a female was collected at a depth of 1,773 metres, the Field Museum in Chicago said.
"Right away, I knew it was something really special," said the museum's Janet Voight, the lead author of the study describing the new species. "I'd never seen anything like it."
The paper, published in the journal Zootaxa, describes the animal as "small, squat, short-armed" with "few arm suckers and gill lamellae" and "smooth skin."
"These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them. I just feel lucky that I got to work with them," Voight said. "If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean. The oceans are so big, and there’s so much left to explore."
