![]() His research paper in the Japanese Journal of Ichthyology describes the fish as having a limp body with soft bones and thin, loose skin. Fricke first described the blobfish Psychrolutes occidentalis from Western Australia in 1990. “Species of Psychrolutes have very weak, barely ossified bones, so they look bloblike even in life,” says ichthyologist Ronald Fricke of the Staatliches Museum in Stuttgart. Alan Riverstone McCulloch/Wikimedia Commons Blobby’s melted appearance: Drawings of blobfish show them as much more fishlike. But up at the surface the fish seem jellylike and basically collapse, distorting their features.Īlive and at proper pressure, P. That makes sense for an animal that lives in the crushing pressures of the deep sea, allowing the fish to compress without cracking their bones. Blobfish don’t have swim bladders but do have very soft bones. ![]() Fish with gas-filled swim bladders undergo rapid expansion of the bladder that could push their internal organs out through their mouths. ![]() Most blobfish are found quite deep, 300 meters or more, meaning that they can be subject to severe decompression when researchers haul them to the surface. Blobby’s remains, the fish was trawled during the NORFANZ expedition at a depth of more than a kilometer. The 11 known species of Psychrolutes are found blobbing along temperate seafloors worldwide.Īccording to the Australian Museum in Sydney, which houses Mr. Blobby is from the genus Psychrolutes in the family Psychrolutidae, known as blobfishes or fathead sculpins, and is possibly a smooth-head blobfish, Psycholutes marcidus. ![]()
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