Trawlers catch deep-sea creature with regrown tail off India. It’s a new species
Hundreds of feet down in the Arabian Sea, a 2-foot-long creature with a “large” head and regrown tail moved through the water, or tried to at least. Something enveloped it and pulled it toward the surface.
Trawlers looked at the deep-sea animal in their catch. They didn’t know it, but they’d just discovered a new species.
Commercial trawlers off the southern coast of India caught several unfamiliar-looking eels in January 2024 and gave the specimens to scientists, Paramasivam Kodeeswaran and T. T. Ajith Kumar wrote in a study published June 30 in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa.
Researchers took a closer look at the eels and matched them with another mystery eel caught in 2022, the study said. After putting the fish together and analyzing their DNA, the team quickly realized it had discovered a new species: Facciolella smithi, or Smith’s witch eel.
Smith’s witch eels have “elongate” bodies reaching just over 2 feet in length, the study said. Their heads are “large” with “small” eyes and cone-shaped teeth. Their gills are “crescent-shaped,” and their tails are “mostly regenerated” or regrown.
A photo shows the two-tone coloring of a Smith’s witch eel. Its top half is brown, and the bottom half is “milky white,” the study said.
Researchers also described the new species’ snout as “duckbill-like” in a June 30 news release from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.
Smith’s witch eels are deep-sea dwellers, found at depths of about 850 to 1,500 feet, the study said. Much about the lifestyle and behavior of the new species remains unknown.
“Nutritional profiling of the new species is currently underway to assess its commercial potential in food and pharmaceutical applications,” officials said.
Researchers said they named the new species after the late David G. Smith, an “eminent eel ichthyologist … for his enormous contribution to the taxonomy of the world’s anguilliform fishes.”
So far, Smith’s witch eels have been found in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Karnataka and Kerala, two neighboring states in southern India.
The new species was identified by its skeleton, fin arrangement, body proportions, head size, coloring and other subtle physical features, the study said. DNA analysis found the new species had at least about 14% genetic divergence from related eels.
This story was originally published July 1, 2025 at 1:10 PM with the headline "Trawlers catch deep-sea creature with regrown tail off India. It’s a new species."
