Rare Fish Not Seen for 25 Years May Have Just Been Found

Scientists believe they have observed a "very rare" fish that has not been seen for more than 25 years.

The sighting came in July during an expedition led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)—an Australian government agency responsible for scientific research.

Researchers aboard the research vessel (RV) Investigator spotted what is thought to be a narrowbody handfish (Pezichthys compressus) using the ship's deep tow camera system, CSIRO said in a press release.

The suspect was observed at a depth of almost 960 feet northeast of Flinders Island—part of the Australian state of Tasmania.

The state's territory consists of an archipelago containing a main island and around a thousand others located roughly 150 miles to the south of the mainland's southeastern tip.

There are around 14 species of handfish—a type of coastal anglerfish found in the waters of southeastern Australia. Seven of these species are endemic to Tasmania and the Bass Strait—the stretch of water that separates the island state from the mainland.

Handfish are notoriously hard to find. The narrowbody handfish, for example, was first discovered by CSIRO in 1986 but was last seen in 1996. The species is known only from two specimens in the agency's Australian National Fish Collection.

Now, CSIRO researchers believe that the species seen during the latest research trip is the narrowbody handfish.

Marine ecologist Candice Untiedt was onboard the RV Investigator and helped to identify the tiny handfish in the deep tow camera's images.

"I was pretty excited to find the handfish. I know that this is a rare and special fish. And that the chances of seeing one in this environment and capturing it on the deep tow camera are very rare. It's an important discovery," Untiedt said in the press release.

"Handfish have a very distinctive shape and features so I was pretty sure it was a handfish. But I was lucky to have my colleague Carlie [Devine], who is a handfish expert, onboard to confirm my suspicions."

Devine, a research technician, said CSIRO scientists "suspect" the sighting was a narrowbody handfish, although the specimen is much larger than the two that have been recorded to date. It was also spotted around 60 miles away from the current known location of the species.

"We can't be 100 percent sure which handfish species it is. This is as close as we can get without seeing others or collecting a sample fish," Devine said.

"I was really hoping to find a deepwater handfish on our cameras during this voyage. To find one so early on in the trip was incredible."

During the voyage, researchers also made some other intriguing finds. For example, they found a brightly-colored tassled coffinfish (Chaunax fimbriatus)—a species of sea toad. These are a type of deep-sea anglerfish that live just above the seafloor.

They also found an intact pyrosome—a bizarre cylindrical or cone-shaped colony of hundreds to thousands of individual creatures known as zooids.

Newsweek has contacted CSIRO for comment via email.