57 brand-new deep-sea species catalogued from Argentina's Mar del Plata Canyon

Twenty taxonomists from Latin America and Europe spent two weeks at a Buenos Aires workshop combing through specimens hauled up by the Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor (too) in 2025 — and judged 57 species and five genera new to science. Standouts include a sea cucumber nicknamed Loki for the horn-like appendages on its back, filmed at 2,577 metres, a bright purple sea cucumber, and a red-orange octocoral. The findings were announced by the Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean Census and Schmidt Ocean Institute; the team examined roughly a tenth of its copepod samples — and every one of them was new.