Animal · Australia, New Zealand
Blobfish
Psychrolutes marcidus — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The blobfish is a deep-sea fish from the cold water off Australia, living so far down that the pressure there is about a hundred times greater than at the surface. Its famous droopy, sulky face only appears once it has been hauled up to the surface. Down in its own world it looks like a fairly ordinary fish.
Picture credit: Rachel Caauwe (CC BY-SA 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the blobfish live?
Home: Deep sea floor off Australia and New Zealand.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Australia, New Zealand.
The short profile
Fully grown: up to about 30 cm long. On the menu: meat.
The story behind it
Between 600 and 1200 metres down there is no light and the water is close to freezing. A fish that deep cannot use a gas-filled swim bladder, because the pressure would squash it flat, so the blobfish is built of a soft jelly-like flesh that is a little lighter than seawater. That lets it hover just above the sea floor without swimming, saving almost all its energy, and it simply waits for crabs, sea snails and other small creatures to drift within reach. Its muscles are weak and its bones are thin, which is fine at that depth but useless in a net. Hauled up in a trawl, the body loses its shape and sags, and that is the sad pink lump people know from photographs.
Find it on the globe
Blobfish is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why does the blobfish look so sad?
Because the photograph was taken in the wrong place. Its soft body holds its shape only under the huge pressure of the deep sea, and at the surface it sags into a droopy lump. In its own water the blobfish has a normal fish face.
How deep does the blobfish live?
Usually between 600 and 1200 metres, on the sea floor off Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand. That is deeper than any sunlight reaches, and the water there stays only a few degrees above freezing all year.
What does a blobfish eat?
Whatever comes close enough. It hangs above the bottom without swimming and takes crabs, sea snails and other small animals that drift or crawl past its mouth, because hunting would cost more energy than the deep sea can spare.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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