Redhand fish4/29/2023 “They’ve got a strategy that works brilliantly in a stable environment,” Barrett says. Handfish typically don’t disperse over long distances, and their young don’t go through a mobile, wide-ranging phase like many other types of fish. Even within those waters, each species is found at only a small number of sites. Typically no longer than six inches, most handfish are believed to live only in the ocean around Tasmania. The author of the above description remains unknown, but it stuck, says Jemina Stuart-Smith, a marine ecologist at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies at the University of Tasmania, and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization. “If you’ve never seen a handfish before, imagine dipping a toad in some brightly colored paint, telling it a sad story, and forcing it to wear gloves two sizes too big,” reads the description of the fish by the Handfish Conversation Project, led by a group of researchers from the Australian government and academic institutions devoted to the animals' conservation. “They’re a canary in the coal mine,” says Neville Barrett, an ichthyologist at Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies. Scientists say this milestone serves as a warning for what may come for other handfish species and other vulnerable, localized species in places like Tasmania. The disappearance of the smooth handfish highlights how sensitive this family of fishes are to environmental disruptions such as climate change, habitat destruction, and pollution, because the smooth handfish was almost certainly common when scientists documented it for the first-and last-time, more than 200 years ago. All but one species is considered endangered, critically endangered, or “data deficient,” meaning there’s not enough information available to decide their status. Thirteen other species of handfish-so named because they perch on the seafloor on fins that look like little hands and act like feet-are probably still around, though seven of the species haven’t been seen since 2000 or earlier. In May, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), a global consortium of scientists that sets the conservation statuses of species, formally listed it as extinct. The smooth handfish ( Sympterichthys unipennis), a shallow-water bottom-dweller with spiky fins and a barb-like protrusion on its forehead, has not been seen since 1802, when French biologist François Péron helped scoop one up near the coast of Tasmania to bring back to Paris’s Natural History Museum.ĭespite extensive searches over many years, no smooth handfish were ever seen again. For the first time in modern history, a marine fish species has been declared extinct.
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