March 8, 2006 Last March, divers exploring the hydrothermal vents of the South Pacific’s Pacific Antarctic Ridge made a very unusual discovery when they came across a creature resembling a blonde, furry lobster in waters 7,450 feet deep. A team of French researchers from the French Research Institute for Exploration of the Sea (IFREMER) named the crustacean Kiwa hirsuta; Kiwa after the goddess of crustaceans in Polynesian mythology, and hirsuata after the Latin world for "hairy."
In a press release by IFREMER the researchers said that while new ocean species are discovered all the time, Kiwa’s entirely unique and unusual appearance has merited the creation of a whole new genus and family.
The white lobster-like creature, described in detail for the first time in the October 2005 edition of the journal of the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, is just under six inches long and distinguished by the long, silky blonde hair-like strands covering its pincers, an attribute which Michel Segonzac of IFREMER described to the Associated Press (AP) as being a very "surprising characteristic." With its bare torso and hairy claws, the animal looks like a lobster dressed in a long feather boa. The crustacean is also blind. In place of eyes, Dr. Segonzac told the AP, there is only "the vestige of a membrane."
"Even though the original discovery of Kiwa was made a year ago, it's pretty routine not to publicize findings until they've been published," Robert Vrijenhoek, a senior researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the chief scientist for the IFREMER expedition, told Outside Online. "After we found the specimen we had to bring it to Spain, where our fellow scientist Enrique MacPherson performed molecular work and determined that this species was unique enough to deserve its own genus and family."
The research expedition that made the discovery utilized Alvin, the U.S. Navy-owned Deep Submergence Vehicle (DSV) famous for its surveillance work during the original exploration of the Titanic wreckage. According to Dr. Vrijenhoek this voyage to the South Pacific marked the furthest south Alvin had ever traveled.
At the conclusion of the just-published research paper “A New Squat Lobster Family of Galatheodea from the Hydrothermal Vents of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge,” the authors Michel Segonzac, Enrique MacPherson, and William Jones speculate that the extent of Kiwa's habitat distribution may be limited by the geographical features of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge. The paper concludes that "only a southern exploration will bring precision to the extent of the distribution area of this species. However this knowledge will be improbable because the use of the submarines under these high latitudes will be limited by the difficult climatic condition."
Bizarre appearances aside, one can't help but wonder if the find is really that big of a deal—especially seeing as it probably wouldn't go well with drawn butter. For Dr. Vrijenhoek the answer to that question is an unequivocal yes. "The creation of a new family hasn't happened in over 100 years. It's quite exciting."
To read more about new species and how they get their names, read “Survival of the A-List” from the March issue of Outside.
