Scientists Discover a New Species of Elusive Ghost Shark

Meet the Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish, a mysterious creature with a skinny, whip-like tail and a thin snout lurking deep in the waters off New Zealand and Australia.

Scientists with New Zealand’s National Institute for Water and Atmospheric Research recently discovered the elusive fish, which lives on the ocean floor at depths of more than 1.5 miles. They initially thought it belonged to a known, globally distributed species, but later showed the animal was genetically and morphologically unique, according to a new paper published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fishes.

“We are still describing new species on a regular basis, and sometimes these discoveries have been right under our noses the whole time,” says Brit Finucci, the fisheries scientist who described the new species, to NBC News’ Peter Guo.

The Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish is a type of chimaera, a group of deep sea-dwelling fish with skeletons made of cartilage. They are closely related to rays and sharks and have smooth, scale-free skin. Chimaeras use their beak-like teeth to munch on shrimp, mollusks and other crustaceans that live on the ocean floor. Their large pectoral fins help them “fly” through the water, which is why they’re sometimes referred to as the “ocean’s butterflies,” per the Guardian’s Eva Corlett.

In addition to “spookfish,” species of chimaera have several other nicknames, including ghost shark, elephant fish, rat fish and rabbit fish.

Chimaeras have been around for more than 400 million years, and the earliest known chimaera fossil is 280 million years old. But despite their long lineage, scientists know very little about them. This makes every new revelation “even more exciting,” Finucci says in a statement.

While brainstorming the new species’ scientific name, Finucci thought about the chimaera’s long history, as well as one of her favorite relatives. In the end, she named it Harriotta avia in honor of her grandmother.

“Avia means grandmother in Latin,” she says in the statement. “I wanted to give this nod to her, because she proudly supported me through my career as a scientist. Chimaeras are also rather ancient relatives—the grandmas and grandpas—of fish, and I thought the name was well suited.”

Researchers found the Australasian narrow-nosed spookfish while conducting surveys for Fishers New Zealand. They gathered specimens from the Chatham Rise, a region of the ocean floor east of New Zealand. In 2022, scientists surveying the same area discovered a rare baby ghost shark.

“It just goes to show how little we know about our oceans, particularly the deep sea,” Finucci tells NBC News.

Scientists have identified more than 50 known species of chimaera, most within the last two decades. But their deep-sea habitats are hard for researchers to access, which makes it challenging to study and monitor these elusive fish. Scientists don’t know how many individual chimaeras are swimming around in the world’s oceans, nor how long they live. They’re also still trying to figure out what role they play in the ecosystem.

“Ghost sharks are incredibly under-studied, there is a lot we don’t know about them,” Finucci tells the Guardian. “Chimaeras are quite cryptic in nature … and they generally don’t get the same attention sharks do, when it comes to research.”

Some evidence suggests that certain chimaera species might disappear before researchers can unravel their many mysteries. In 2020, the Shark Specialist Group, an arm of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, determined that 16 percent of ghost shark species are either “threatened” or “near threatened.” They couldn’t assess the extinction risk of 15 percent of species, because so little information about them is available.

“How can we start to wrap our head around keeping them from going extinct if we don’t know anything about them?” Dominique Didier, an ichthyologist at Millersville University, told the New York Times’ Annie Roth in 2020.

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Sarah Kuta is a writer and editor based in Longmont, Colorado. She covers history, science, travel, food and beverage, sustainability, economics and other topics.