Scientists confirmed the golf ball-sized octopus is a new species a decade after its first sighting on a deep-sea expedition.
CHICAGO — A deep-sea robot gliding over the ocean floor near the Galápagos Islands captured footage of something researchers had never seen before: a tiny, vivid blue octopus no bigger than a golf ball.
Now, a decade after that first sighting, scientists have officially confirmed it is a species new to science.
The octopus was first spotted in 2015 during an expedition aboard the E/V Nautilus, conducted in partnership with the Charles Darwin Foundation and the Galápagos National Park Directorate. A remotely operated vehicle descended nearly 5,800 feet to explore the seafloor near Darwin Island, at the northern edge of the archipelago.
The crew collected one specimen and captured video footage of two more. Back at the Charles Darwin Research Station, scientists sorted through dozens of specimens brought up from the dive. The little blue octopus stood out immediately.
Unsure what species it belonged to, researchers contacted Janet Voight, curator emerita of invertebrates at the Field Museum in Chicago.
“Right away, I knew it was something really special,” Voight said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”
Voight is the lead author of the paper formally describing the new species, published in the journal Zootaxa. She said the challenge with such a rare specimen was examining it without destroying it. Identifying a new octopus species requires inspecting its mouth, beak and teeth, which normally means cutting the animal open. With only one specimen available, that wasn’t an option.
Instead, Voight worked with Stephanie Smith, manager of the Field Museum’s X-ray computed tomography laboratory, to create micro CT scans of the animal. The technique stacks thousands of X-rayed slices into a detailed 3D model, revealing internal structures without any dissection.
“Because CT imaging is non-destructive, it’s especially important for type specimens like this one,” Smith said. “There’s nothing like spending the day looking at something no other human has ever seen.”
The scans revealed the octopus’s internal organs in remarkable detail, providing enough information to confirm it as a previously unknown species and place it among related octopods.
The animal has been named Microeledone galapagensis. It is the first new octopus species Voight has formally described in her 40-year career studying octopus evolution.
“These are little octopuses that live in the deep sea, and hardly anybody on Earth has ever gotten to see them,” Voight said. “If you took all the land on Earth and pieced it together, you would not cover the Pacific Ocean. The oceans are so big, and there’s so much left to explore.”
Marine scientist Salome Buglass, a co-author of the paper and former researcher at the Charles Darwin Foundation, said the discovery underscores how little is known about the deep ocean around the Galápagos.
“Every new species helps us better understand these hidden ecosystems and why protecting them matters,” she said.
The Galápagos Islands, located off the coast of Ecuador, are home to more than 1,000 plant and animal species found nowhere else on Earth.