Credit: Brian Sidlauskas, Oregon State University
CORVALLIS, Ore. - Four decades after their capture more than a half-mile below the ocean s surface, three snailfish species have received their scientific names, two of them from school children on Guam in the island s native Chamorro language.
The rare specimens of liparids were collected in the early 1980s in traps set in the Mariana Archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean, deposited with NOAA s Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center in Hawaii and did not get examined until recently, when they were noticed during the center s move to a new location.
Oregon State alumnus Bruce Mundy, retired from the National Marine Fisheries Service, learned of the liparid specimens from Robert Moffitt, the Pacific Islands Fisheries Science Center biologist who collected them.