All about blobfish

Not many people have seen blobfish. That’s because they live in very deep water, mostly at the bottom of the ocean. Frankly, blobfish aren’t very attractive. However, they can only be seen by fishermen who accidentally catch them in the net when cleaning the seabed.

Blobfish or blobscarpins were born off the coast of Australia and Tasmania. Where they live, at about 800 meters, the pressure is 80 times the pressure at sea level. That means most fish bladders aren’t going to work for them. However, this fish is actually just a large amount of gel, like looking at Jello (TM), but with larger eyes, nose and mouth. The average length of a fish is about 2 feet.

Because they are all gels, this fish is less dense than water. This allows him to float on the sea floor without having to swim. That’s good because blobfish have no muscle at all. It looks like a large chunk of jelly, but its face is triangular and looks like a frown or a frown. Blobfish feed by simply sitting in the water and waiting for something to eat. We mainly eat sea urchins, mollusks and crustaceans.

Blobfish was first described in 1978, but most recently it was described in terms of fish identification. The first blob fish to breed were found on the Gorda Cliffs off California in 2000. The fish were in areas where other types of fish and octopuses also breed. These fish have been monitored and leveled at several different locations and levels by remotely operated vehicles and have been studied annually since their discovery.

When first discovered, blobfish were monitoring nests containing 9,000 to 108,000 pink eggs. All the nests kept gloomy fish either sitting on or touching the eggs. The other nest locations in the rugged area looked uninhabited, but the eggs were perfectly clean. This was thought to mean that the gloomy fish was sitting on the eggs or cleaned frequently.

Dozens of blobfish and their nests were very close to each other. Eggs are on adjacent rocks, sometimes only a meter between families. None of the fish, with or without eggs, showed fear of all of the remote vehicles. Scientists are still trying to identify why such reproductive hotspots exist. It is now believed to be associated with cold seeps that warm the water in these areas and provide a stable food flow.