New eel species described by ICAR-CMFRI, named after Institute

Scientists from the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute (ICAR-CMFRI), Kochi have described a new species of conger eel from the deep waters of the Arabian Sea and named it after the Institute to mark CMFRI’s 80th anniversary year.

The new species, named Ariosoma cmfriense, was collected from the waters off Kollam at a depth of about 300 metres in January this year.  

The specimen was identified as a distinct species based on a combination of morphological characteristics and molecular evidence. It was distinguished from the 12 currently recognised Ariosoma species reported from Indian and neighbouring waters through detailed taxonomic examination. These include a comparatively low total vertebral count of 135, 127–130 lateral-line pores, a preanal length of nearly half the total length, two supraorbital pores and a dorsal fin origin just ahead of the pectoral fin base. The fish also has a plain pectoral fin, a dark patch over the operculum and fine black speckling below the lateral line, a feature not observed in the other related species.

The discovery is expected to offer new dimensions to India’s deep-sea research by strengthening scientific understanding about biodiversity and generating baseline information for resource conservation, said Dr Grinson George, Director of ICAR-CMFRI.  

The discovery was made as part of a research component under the Deep Ocean Mission (DOM), a national programme of the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES). The research project is led by Dr Rekha J. Nair, Principal Scientist of ICAR-CMFRI.

The holotype has been deposited in the ICAR-CMFRI Marine Biodiversity Museum, further enriching the institute’s repository of documented marine biodiversity.

A scientific paper about this discovery has been published in the international taxonomic journal Zootaxa.