A Taiwanese academic and two researchers at universities in the US have discovered two new batfish species that live at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico, but their existence might be endangered by the BP oil spill.
“This is the first time that we have just found a new species at the same time they are at risk of extinction,” said Ho Hsuan-ching (何宣慶), a postdoctoral fellow at Academia Sinica’s Biodiversity Research Center and one of three researchers who made the discovery, yesterday.
Halieutichthys, commonly known as pancake batfish because of their rounded and small flat bodies, are bottom dwellers that move by “walking” with their stout, arm-like fins, the scientists said.
Ho and his colleagues examined 5,000 specimens from the western Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico and discovered that five different species had been previously grouped together as one.
Three of the five live in the Gulf of Mexico, including two new species, Halieutichthys intermedius and Halieutichthys bispinosus.
“All five species live in waters either partially or fully encompassed by the recent oil spill, with the [Halieutichthys] Intermedius completely restricted to the oil spill area,” Ho said.
He expressed concern that Halieutichthys intermedius was at risk of extinction unless another habitat could be found because of the uncertainty surrounding the impact of the oil spill on the fish’s environment and food supply.
Even if some fish survived severe conditions, such as food shortages, their offspring might have trouble subsisting, Ho said.
According to Academia Sinica, co-author John Sparks from the American Museum of Natural History believes that the discoveries “underscore the potential loss of undocumented biodiversity that a disaster of this scale may portend.”
The study, was published in the Journal of Fish Biology on July 15.
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