New Sea Bass Species Discovered in Southern Caribbean
Posted on May 19, 2014
A new species of sea bass has been discovered in the deep reefs off the southern Caribbean. The new species is the spot-tail golden bass (Liopropoma santi). The new species was discovered by Smithsonian scientists, Dr. Carole C. Baldwin and Dr. D. Ross Robertson.
The fish has a yellow body and fins. It has a dark spot on the lower part of its tail fin, which helped give it its common name.
To collect deep-reef fish specimens, the scientists are diving to 300 meters off Curacao using a manned submersible, the Curasub. Dr. Baldwin says in a statement, "This underexplored zone between 60 and 300 m in the tropical southern Caribbean is revealing extraordinary biodiversity, including a wealth of new species of beautifully colored fishes. It's a zone that science has largely missed because it's too deep to access using scuba gear, and deep-diving submersibles rarely stop at such shallow depths."
A research paper on the new species is published here in ZooKeys. The new species is related to another recently discovered sea bass species, Liopropoma olneyi.
