“The deep ocean is a vast reservoir of biodiversity that harbors unique species, communities, and ecosystems,” write the authors of a new study. We tend to think of the deep ocean as cold, dark, and barren. Cold and dark it may be, but despite these harsh conditions, diverse animals still manage to survive and call it home.
Even in the Atacama Trench, a deep-sea canyon off the coast of Chile and Peru that plunges more than 7,000 meters beneath the surface, scientists have also uncovered life. Meet Dulcibella camanchaca. This large amphipod—a type of shrimp-like crustacean—roams the trench, preying on smaller creatures in one of the most extreme environments on Earth.
Don Quixote and Darkness
The newly discovered predator draws its name from linguistic and cultural roots associated with the Atacama region. The genus name Dulcibella follows a literary tradition established by related genera. Cleonardo and Dorotea — close relatives of Dulcibella — derive their names from characters in Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote. In homage to this tradition, Dulcibella takes inspiration from “Dulcinea,” the idealized sweetheart of Don Quixote, symbolizing beauty, sweetness, and inspiration.
Because “Dulcinea” was already taken by a beetle genus, the name Dulcibella was chosen, The specific name, camanchaca, can be translated as ‘darkness’ from Indigenous languages in western South America.
“Dulcibella camanchaca is a fast-swimming predator that we named after “darkness” in the languages of the peoples from the Andes region to signify the deep, dark ocean from where it predates,” explained the study’s co-lead author, Dr. Johanna Weston, a hadal ecologist at WHOI. The word ‘hadal’ relates to the zone of the sea greater than 6000 m in depth.
What Darkness looks like
The Atacama Trench is a world defined by extremes. At depths of around 7,900 meters, the pressure is over 1,000 times that at the surface. Temperatures hover near freezing, and sunlight is absent. Life must adapt or perish.
Finding a creature living in such extreme environments is always exciting, and Dulcibella camanchaca has some pretty exciting features.
For starters, it’s small (at just 4 cm) and white. The lack of color is the result of living in dark environments. Creatures in the deep sea and in isolated caves tend to lack color because no one can really see it.
But despite its size, Darkness is a hunter. Unlike many other amphipods in the trench, which scavenge dead organic matter, Dulcibella actively looks for prey. It uses specialized appendages to capture amphipod species. Its long, slender body and quick claws make it an effective predator on the trench floor, where food is scarce.
Life in the deep
The discovery of Dulcibella camanchaca provides a rare glimpse into the hadal zone — the ocean’s deepest regions. The zone is found in trenches between 6,000 and 11,000 meters deep. These depths are the final frontier of marine exploration, where each new discovery reshapes what we know about life on Earth.
These deep areas are generally classified together as the ‘hadal zone’ but actually, these areas can be very different from one another because they’re isolated. Creatures don’t just migrate from one hadal area to another, so each oceanic trench may host its own wealth of endemic life.z
While trenches globally are classified together as the hadal zone, they tend to be physically isolated from each other in real life, like islands of negative space separated by swaths of seafloor.
A Unique Find in the Deep
And like islands on the surface, each oceanic trench may host its own wealth of endemic wildlife, teeming with creatures found nowhere else. Much more research will be needed to reveal the abundance and diversity of trench life, but findings like this can go a long way.
“Most excitingly, the DNA and morphology data pointed to this species being a new genus too, emphasizing the Atacama Trench as an endemic hotspot,” continued Weston.
Deep Sea Rovers are finally enabling us to catch a glimpse into this isolated world. This remarkable finding was made in 2023 thanks to the Integrated Deep-Ocean Observing System (IDOOS) Expedition aboard the R/V Abate Molina. Four Dulcibella camanchaca individuals were collected at a depth of 7,902 meters using a lander vehicle. The unfortunate individuals were frozen and brought back to the surface, where they underwent detailed morphological and genetic analysis at the Universidad de Concepción.
As technology advances (and if such missions continue to be funded), more secrets of the deep will be revealed. Each expedition brings new surprises, and Dulcibella camanchaca is a reminder that, even in the darkness, life thrives in unexpected ways.
The study was published in Systematics and Biodiversity.
