Spotted creature hiding in ‘plain sight’ in Great Barrier Reef is new species. See it

The Great Barrier Reef — encompassing an area in the Pacific Ocean roughly the size of Germany — is the world’s largest reef ecosystem.

The natural wonder, located off the coast of Australia, is in jeopardy, having lost around half of its coral in recent decades due to climate change, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. Warming water has sent many marine species in search of cooler environments.

But, at a time of such devastation, researchers made a small discovery worth celebrating. A new species of fish, a spotted, slender creature, was found hiding “in plain sight.”

It is the first new marine species discovered in the reef in years, according to a study published Oct. 8 in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation.

“This is a significant, exciting discovery,” Chris Dudgeon, a marine biologist and study coauthor, said in a University of the Sunshine Coast news release.

“While the Great Barrier Reef is a much-studied ecosystem, the last completely new species to be described was a grouper found in the deep sea in 2019,” Dudgeon added.

Divers spotted the brown-and-white fish nestled in a sand burrow in a shallow, southern section of the reef.

Six specimens were eventually found, collected and analyzed in a lab, according to the study.

DNA analysis revealed that it is a member of the genus Tomiyamichthys, a family of goby fish found throughout the Indian and Pacific oceans, according to INaturalist, a citizen scientist platform.

Gobies are small bottom-dwellers that often inhabit mud or sand burrows that they share with other species, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.

It was named elliotensis after Lady Elliot Island, an island in the reef the specimens were located near.

The new species, distinguished by its brown spots, yellow stripes and “sail-like” fin, is believed to dwell in sandy bottoms about 50 to 80 feet below the surface.

Gobies are often overlooked on account of their small size and “cryptic” behavior, but “a close look at these fishes reveals a subtle beauty in their color patterns which often rivals that of their more conspicuous cousins on the reef like butterflyfishes or parrotfishes,” Mark Erdmann, one of the coauthors, said in the release.

It’s important to examine gobies, Erdmann said, because they’re likely to make up most of the undocumented species in the reef.

This story was originally published October 11, 2023 at 6:44 PM with the headline "Spotted creature hiding in ‘plain sight’ in Great Barrier Reef is new species. See it."