An eel found 300 metres down off Kollam now carries the name of the institute that found it

Scientists at the ICAR-Central Marine Fisheries Research Institute in Kochi have formally described a conger eel that is new to science. Collected from deep water off Kollam, about 300 metres (about 1,000 feet) down, in January this year, the eel stood apart from the 12 known relatives in its group around India — in the count of its backbones, in its DNA, and in fine black speckling along its side that no relative shows. It has been named Ariosoma cmfriense, after the institute itself, in the institute's 80th anniversary year, and the description is published in the journal Zootaxa. The work was part of India's Deep Ocean Mission, and the specimen now rests in the institute's Marine Biodiversity Museum in Kochi — one more mapped neighbour in an ocean whose deep water is still mostly uncharted.

SDG 14 · Life below water