Tiny golf-ball-sized octopus unknown to science discovered in Pacific Ocean

Hidden deep beneath one of the world's most famous island chains, scientists have uncovered a tiny marine mystery unlike anything they had seen before.

In Short

• New tiny blue octopus found near Galapagos Islands
• Specimen collected using underwater robot in 2015
• Micro CT scan used to confirm new species without harm

Nearly 6,000 feet beneath the Pacific Ocean, somewhere in the inky darkness near the Galapagos Islands, a creature no bigger than a golf ball drifted across a camera lens. It was the moment a group of scientists had discovered a new species of octopus.

The Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, are home to more than a thousand plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth. These include marine iguanas and giant tortoises.

Now, the deep waters surrounding these islands have yielded something entirely new.

In a new paper published in the journal Zootaxa, scientists have announced the discovery of the newest animal found in the Galapagos; a tiny blue octopus, named Microeledone galapagensis.

The discovery is the result of a collaboration between researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago, the Charles Darwin Foundation, and the Galapagos National Park Directorate, and it has been more than a decade in the making.

AFTER A SEARCH OF 10 YEARS

The octopus was first spotted during a 2015 deep-sea expedition conducted aboard the exploration vessel E/V Nautilus.

From the ship, the crew used a remotely operated underwater robot to explore the ocean floor near Darwin Island, which is the northernmost island of the Galapagos archipelago, named after the biologist whose work there helped him formulate the theory of evolution.

As the robot's camera moved over the seafloor near an underwater mountain, 5,800 feet below the surface, the researchers noticed the octopus, and collected it using the robotic vehicle.

Back at the Charles Darwin Research Station, the tiny blue octopus, about the size of a golf ball, immediately stood out from the dozens of other deep-sea specimens brought up during the expedition.

Researchers contacted Janet Voight, curator emerita of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago, and sent her photographs of the animal.

"Right away, I knew it was something really special," Voight said. "I'd never seen anything like it."

Confirming the find proved challenging because the team had only one specimen.

CONFIRMING WITHOUT CUTTING

Voight did not want to cut the tiny creature open, as is standard practice for studying a new octopus species.

So researchers instead used micro CT scanning, a non-destructive imaging technique that uses thousands of X-ray slices to build a detailed 3D model of an object, inside and out.

The scans revealed the octopus's internal organs in enough detail to formally declare it a new species.

Furthermore, this is the first new octopus species that Voight has officially led a team in describing, in a career spanning four decades.

"Discoveries like these remind us how much of the deep ocean in the Galapagos remains unexplored. Every new species helps us better understand these hidden ecosystems and why protecting them matters," said Salome Buglass, marine scientist and co-author of the paper.

In a world where the deep ocean is among the least explored places on the planet, a golf-ball-sized blue octopus is a vivid reminder of how much is still waiting to be found.

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