Fifty-seven new deep-sea species found in Argentina's underwater canyons

Every time I think the ocean can't surprise me anymore, a story like this comes along. A team of scientists recently wrapped up a species-identification workshop in Buenos Aires and, in just two weeks, confirmed 57 brand-new marine species and 5 new genera from samples pulled out of the Mar del Plata Canyon. That's an absurd amount of life no one had ever named before.

What gets me is how fast they did it. They gathered about twenty taxonomists from Latin America and Europe, handed them specimens collected by the research vessel Falkor (too) back in August 2025, and let them work through the material using Ocean Census NOVA, an open platform for logging new species. They found twenty new copepods, twenty-two echinoderms like sea cucumbers, fourteen corals, and a scaphopod mollusc.

The star of the show is "Loki", a deep-sea sea cucumber with little horn-shaped appendages that made everyone think of the Norse god. It was filmed alive on the seafloor at around 2,577 metres, the kind of footage that reminds you how alien our own planet still is.

Honestly, this is why I keep following deep-sea news. The same expedition that turned a bright orange starfish into a viral "Patrick Star" moment is now giving us whole new species. If you want to dig in yourself, the open data lives at oceancensus.org — the researchers are putting everything out there for free.

Source: Schmidt Ocean Institute