In July, they captured a tiny shark. Two weeks ago, they nabbed a giant shrimp. Yes, those crazy kids over at the Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority (NELHA) are still at it! Inspired by the capture of a new squid species nicknamed “octosquid,” NELHA Operations Manager Jan C. War spearheaded a new program called the Deep Sea Critter Program, dedicated to cataloguing and classifying the strange seabeasts that NELHA’s 3,000-foot-deep ocean pipelines suck up from Hawaii’s Keahole Point with astounding regularity.
NELHA executive director Ron Baird was giving the grand tour to some military types when he spotted a tiny shark-shaped creature swimming in a sump pump. The creature defies easy categorization: War, who bestowed the title “microshark,” told the Hawaii Tribune Herald, "Maybe we should call it 'microskate.’ Or how about 'microray?'"
The creatue is shark-shaped from the side, but ray-shaped from the top. It’s about eight inches long, and its brown-purple skin is slightly translucent. Making it more sharklike are its semicircular mouth, sandpapery skin, and asymmetrical tail. Its head has a characteristically ray-like paddle shape. Perhaps most oddly, War told the Tribune Herald, the microshark also has two little organs next to its mouth that look like a remora’s suction cups. Add it all up, and you get something mighty strange. War told Monster-Watch in an email that the microshark has been tentatively classified as genus Apristurus, but “is still an un-described species.” The specimen, which survived at NELHA for three days, is now at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu.
The microshark combines characteristics from sharks, rays, remoras, and Micro Machines.
(Photo courtesy of Jan War, Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.)
On the other end of the wrong-size spectrum, NELHA pulled up what War calls a “megashrimp” two weeks ago. War told Monster-Watch, “It was nine inches long and had antenna over two feet long. Its carapace was semi transparent to the point where you could see its internal organs. It had purple legs and swimmerets.”
Jumbo shrimp ain't just for seafood buffets.
(Photo courtesy of Jan War, Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority.)
The Deep Sea Critter Program, on which NELHA is working with the West Hawaii Explorations Academy, hopes to keep an eye on the pumps and design a net so that future sea monsters can be safely retrieved.
