Asian Diver and Scuba Diver Issue 03/2017 (109) | Page 6

# briefing
WORDS
OF WISDOM
Voyaging begins
when one burns
one’s boats,
adventures begin
with a shipwreck.
MICHEL SERRES
Only that which
cannot be lost in
a shipwreck
is yours.
NEW MOLA SPECIES
For the first time in 130 years, a new species of
Mola has been described. Lead author Marianne
Nyegaard of the Murdoch University in Australia
and her colleagues have named the new species
the “hoodwinker” sunfish or Mola tecta, derived
from the Latin word tectus meaning disguised
or hidden.
SIGNPOST
LOST
6 SDAA
As part of her PhD research, Nyegaard
analysed DNA from more than 150 skin samples
of sunfish and found that the samples pointed
towards four distinct species. But only three
species had been previously described, the
scientists report in a new study published in the
Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. The
fourth one had not been recorded yet. A Japanese
research team had found similar genetic evidence
of an unknown sunfish species in Australian
waters some 10 years ago.
To find out what this new species might look
like, Nyegaard started scouring social media for
pictures of sunfish and built a network of people
across Australia and New Zealand who could alert
her whenever a sunfish was observed. She hit the
jackpot in 2014 when four sunfish were stranded
on the same beach in New Zealand.
Scientists have yet to categorically determine
the range of this new species, but they have found
individuals around New Zealand, Tasmania, South
Australia, Victoria and New South Wales Australia,
South Africa and southern Chile.
The ocean sunfish is one of the strangest
and most elusive of the oceans’ inhabitants.
They spend most of their lives feeding hundreds
of metres deep, surfacing rarely to bask in the
sunlight and visit cleaning stations.
AL-GHAZALI
Like a
shipwreck or
a jetty, almost
anything that
forms a structure
in the ocean,
whether it is
natural or artificial
over time,
collects life.
SYLVIA EARLE
Archaeology
is not what you
find, it’s what
you find out.
DAVID HURST THOMAS