We bring you another epic deep sea creature in the form of Harriotta haeckeli or the smallspine spookfish, who is known not for its bizarre, but rather beautiful features. This species of the spookfish is a member of Rhinochimaeridae family and is related to sharks. It has a poisonous spine that protect it and is not known to grow more than 70 cm long. The eyeballs on this guy is rather creepy but there may be a reason for it, like their cousins, the brownsnout spookfish who has these awesome reflector eyes designed to absorb light wherever it may appear in the dark depths of the deep ocean. Remember, any light that is produced at depths lower than 1000 m is probably going to be from fish that produce its own light, or bioluminescent fish.

Very little is known about this particular species because it lives in depths of 2600 m and below. Fortunately, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s ROV Deep Discoverer caught some amazingly rare footage of the H. haeckeli during a mission off the coast of Northeast America while they were exploring some deep-sea canyons.

This majestic and spook..y creature is basically the aquatic version of Zero from the Nightmare Before Christmas or an albino Gorebyss with soulless eyes, but unfortunately, they may be in danger!

Apparently, even though there is such limited data on the smallspine spookfish, it is believed that they are being devastated by deep-sea trawling.

 

They are also not majestic when they are dead. So….let’s work on preventing less of this from happening, mmmmkay?