Flying spaghetti monsters, Casper octopus, and a fish that looks like a Muppet are just a few of the rare creatures found on a previously unknown underwater mountain off the coast of Chile. During ocean expeditions in the Southeast Pacific this year, scientists found an underwater wonderland, including more than 100 potentially new-to-science species. “We far exceeded our hopes on this expedition,” expedition leader Javier Sellanes of Chile’s Catholic University of the North (UCN), said in a statement. “You always expect to find new species in these remote and poorly explored areas, but the amount we found, especially for some groups like sponges, is mind-blowing.” This is the first time this rare octopus species, informally named the Casper octopus, has been seen in the Southern Pacific. Image courtesy of ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute CC BY-NC-SA Scientists mapped and explored numerous seamounts along underwater mountain ranges like the Nazca Ridge and Salas y Gómez Ridge, venturing into areas that have never been studied in detail. Among the most significant discoveries was an entirely new seamount in international waters, about 1,450 kilometers (900 miles) off the Chilean coast. The underwater mountain rises more than 3 km meters (nearly 2 miles) from the seafloor, reaching its summit 994 m (3,261 ft) below the ocean surface. The seamount discovery came during a 28-day expedition in July and August led by the Schmidt Ocean Institute in partnership with Ocean Census and the Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping/Joint Hydrographic Center at the University of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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