Roughly 8.7 million species currently exist on Earth. It means that the amount of information about them wouldn’t most probably fit in the brain of an average person. There probably are even more species undiscovered, which makes the scenario even more exciting and frightening at the same time.
If you have already heard about the bright orange female whalefish from the order Cetomimiformes, we congratulate you. It means you have knowledge about a truly unique marine creature that’s able to change its shape.
Whalefish spotted about 6,600 feet deep offshore
According to LiveScience.com, researchers using a submarine have spotted the bright orange and female whalefish as it was located roughly 6,600 feet offshore of Monterey Bay (California).
#FreshFromTheDeep: A whalefish was spotted last week with ROV Doc Ricketts!
This whalefish (order Cetomimiformes) was encountered by @beroe's team on their R/V Western Flyer expedition 2,013 meters deep offshore of Monterey Bay. pic.twitter.com/vm7rtbJLwE
— MBARI (@MBARI_News) August 6, 2021
When whalefish assure their adult forms, two incredibly different body shapes are waiting for them. These amazing creatures live and feed close to the ocean’s surface.
Scientists still have a lot to learn about whalefish, despite the fact that they’ve been discovered for more than a century. Two Smithsonian Institution scientists first recorded such a creature in 1895. Scientists had been mistaken the three totally different forms the whalefish takes across its life for completely different zoological families.
Whether we’re talking about males (aka bignose fish) or females (whalefish), they tend to be located at depths from 4,920 to 6,560 feet.
Monterrey Bay covers an area of 1,163 square kilometres. The bay is located south of the major cities of San Jose and San Francisco. At the north end of the bay, there is Santa Cruz. At the south end, Monterey is located on the Monterey Peninsula.
Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo was the first European who discovered Monterey Bay. He did it in 1542 while he was sailing northward along the coast during a Spanish naval expedition.