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| Courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research |
What's at the bottom of the ocean? Just recently the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Exploration and Research ship Okeanos Explorer finished their Windows to the Deep 2018: Exploration of the Southeast U.S. Continental Margin expedition.
In one of their 17 dives, they discovered their strange horror lizardfish. It is a very toothy deep-sea lizardfish which is called bathysaurus.
Deep-sea lizardfish resemble shallow-water lizardfishes, as reflected in their common names. Adults reach over 70 cm in length, and have a slender, cylindrical body. Their lizard-like bony head is flattened, unlike in most fishes, and an enormous mouth is filled with multiple series of long, sharp and needle like teeth for piercing and trapping prey. Bathysaurus ferox are whitish, grey or brown in color, and are covered in tough scales, which are enlarged along the lateral line. The large, well developed eyes, with large pupils, are evidence of the importance of vision for prey detection. Although residual sunlight does not penetrate the depths inhabited by deep-sea lizardfish, their eyes aid in detecting distinct sources of residual or bioluminescent light.[3] Deep-sea lizardfish have been known to have an expansive liver constituting up to 20% of total weight, serving as an energy reserve to sustain growth between sporadic feeding episodes.
