On a nighttime dive on a spectacular shallow reef in Cozumel, Mexico, underwater photographer Robert Stansfield spied something in the inky darkness he had never seen before: a tiny, transparent fish with bright markings, devilish eyes, and a gaping mouth full of needle-sharp teeth. Blown away, Stansfield quickly snapped a photo and began a mission to figure out exactly what he had seen.
Stansfield reached out to OGL collaborator Simone Rossini, professional research diver and Divemaster at Careyitos Advanced Divers, to see if he knew anything about the fish. Like Stansfield, Rossini was baffled by the bizarre creature. So, he did what researchers often do: he searched for experts. Rossini sent the photo to OGL’s director Dan Distel, who passed it along to a chain of experts that eventually stretched from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego to the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. All weighed in to try to solve the mystery.