The ugliest creature or just weirdly fascinating?

Sometimes, you have to look deep within to find the beauty of life

By Annette J Beveridge

Nature is beautiful and infinitely complex but one species living deep in the ocean depths has been labelled the ugliest.

The aptly named blobfish is a member of the Psychrolutidae family. Other names include sculpin or the less kind…fathed.

The species lives at depths of between 600 and 1200 metres. It is able to adapt to its environment with its squishy body, soft bones, and lack of muscle.

The image portrayed of a blobfish is usually unappealing but the one most people will remember was taken when dead.

Alive and in its natural environment, it resembles a fish with a slightly bulbous head, a pinkish, grey body colour, black eyes that are pronounced and a tail that is often considered to resemble a tadpole. They weigh less than 2 kg.

Blobfish do not have a swim bladders -the organ that helps fish to control buoyancy. For the blobfish, this would be deadly due to ocean pressure and its fatty body aids its survival in the depths as it is less dense than the water in which it lives.

Blobfish conserve energy and will remain still or just flow along in the depths. Less than energetic, it eats whatever moves by them such as small crustaceans.

As yet, the numbers of blobfish remain unknown and it is undetermined whether endangered or even how long they live for.

They are considered to be widespread across the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans.

Ugly or uniquely charismatic? You decide but we can still embrace this strange creature and marvel that there is so much to learn about and to protect within the ocean depths.