When a six-foot-long gelatinous animal turned up off Brazil’s Bahia cost, initial accounts quoted scientists calling the creature “completely new, scientifically speaking.” However, fish experts taking a closer look at the video footage have now managed to identify it as being a member of Ateleopodidae, an elusive family of deep-sea fish known as jellynoses or tadpole fish.

“As soon as I saw it, I knew what it was,” said Dave Johnson, ichthyologist at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.

The family Ateleopodidae is a group of deep-dwelling fishes known for their soft, blunt noses, small teeth, and scaleless, tapered bodies.

Despite being identified by science as early as the 1840s, we still know very little about this family and only about a dozen species have been named and described. They are found at depths ranging from about 1,300 to 2,300 feet (400 to 700 meters), where the lack of oxygen and nutrients makes being a gelatinous blob with very little muscle tissue superior to having a strong, burly body.

“You don’t ever see any hard, muscular fishes like tuna in the deep sea,” Johnson said, since at those depths there aren’t enough oxygen and nutrients to feed dense muscle tissue.

The Ateleopodidae fish was found floating dead by researchers from the Brazilian TAMAR Program, a sea turtle conservation group. If this species is already known to science or not remains unclear, but it is certainly the first of its kind ever to be identified in Brazilian waters.

“I’ve never heard of anything [like this] caught off the Brazil coast at all,” says marine biologist Jon Moore of Florida Atlantic University who has studied the diets of Ateleopodidae fish.

You can watch a movie here.

New research has revealed that the tapetail, bignose and whalefish are in fact all the same fish.

For decades, three different names have been used for three very different looking underwater creatures: the Tapetail, the Bignose and the Whalefish. A team of seven scientists*, including Smithsonian curator Dr Dave Johnson, has now discovered that these three fishes are in fact part of the same family.

After studying the body structures of the tapetails (Mirapinnidae), bignose fish (Megalomycteridae) and whalefish (Cetomimidae) and taking advantage of modern DNA-analysis, the team realized that the three are actually the larvae, male and female, respectively, of a single fish family – Cetomimidae (also known as Flabby whalefish).

“This is an incredibly significant and exciting finding,” says Johnson. “For decades scientists have wondered why all tapetails were sexually immature, all bignose fishes were males and all whalefishes were females and had no known larval stages. The answer to part of that question was right under our noses all along—the specimens of tapetails and bignose fishes that were used to describe their original families included transitional forms—we just needed to study them more carefully.”

If you wish to find out more, the article “Deep-sea mystery solved: astonishing larval transformations and extreme sexual dimorphism unite three fish families” has been published in the journal Biology Letters by the Royal Society, London.

http://publishing.royalsociety.org/

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content/g06648352k5m1562/

* The seven scientists behind the discovery are:

G.David Johnson, Division of Fishes, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC 20560, USA

John R. Paxton, Ichthyology, Australian Museum, Sydney, New South Wales 2010, Australia

Tracey T. Sutton, Virginia Institute of Marine Science, Gloucester Point, VA 23062, USA

Takashi P. Satoh, Marine Bioscience, Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan

Tetsuya Sado, Zoology, Natural History Museum and Institute, Chuo-ku, Chiba 266-8682, Japan

Mutsumi Nishida, Marine Bioscience, Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo, Nakano-ku, Tokyo 164-8639, Japan

Masaki Miya, Zoology, Natural History Museum and Institute, Chuo-ku, Chiba 266-8682, Japan

September 27, 2008 is the projected date for the Smithsonian Institution to open its new “Ocean Hall.” The hall will be an astounding 23,000 square feet of displays, facts, history, exploration, and countless other exhibits to help bring man and the oceans together. Ocean Hall will cover an immense array of oceanic topics using an auditorium, high tech video feeds, and fossils; but perhaps the most exciting, for any fish enthusiasts, will be the wonderful live displays.

Ocean Hall will be housing a 1,500 gallon coral reef tank; the coral tank will hold a vast number of fish, corals, and other inhabitants that make the coral reefs so amazing. Perhaps, the most impressive live exhibit will be the 1,800 gallon tank that the Smithsonian will be using to accommodate a 24 foot long female giant squid.

Multiple changing galleries will be set within Ocean Hall, the galleries exhibits changing themes every 18 months; the first of many shows being titled “Going to Sea.” Which covers many important issues in mans relationship with the oceans. This will be the largest remodeling that the Smithsonian has undergone since it opened its doors in 1910; and perhaps one of the most important; raising awareness amongst people about how important the oceans truly are to us.

To read the full article on Ocean Hall and to gather a complete list of all that Ocean Hall will bring to the Smithsonian Institution visit usa today at: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-04-25-ocean-hall-smithsonian_N.htm