History of discovery
Observations, captures and rediscoveries that changed what we know about the ocean.
In April 1828, a 4.6-metre specimen was harpooned in Table Bay, South Africa. Andrew Smith, a military doctor then stationed at the Cape, studied it and described it the following year: the first scientific description of the whale shark, the largest living fish known today. The holotype from this original description is now held at the French National Museum of Natural History in Paris.
In 1898–1899, German zoologist Carl Chun explored the deep ocean aboard the Valdivia during a year-long expedition covering the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Indian Ocean. Among the deep-sea specimens brought back, he described in 1903 an unprecedented cloaked, squid-like creature, which he named Vampyroteuthis infernalis — literally 'vampire squid from hell' — a name inspired by its dark colour and webbed cloak, not by any predatory habits: the animal actually feeds on organic debris.
In 1938, a coelacanth was caught off the coast of South Africa — a species believed extinct for 65 million years, alongside the dinosaurs. This rediscovery is now regarded as one of the greatest zoological discoveries of the 20th century.
In 1976, off the coast of Hawaii in the Pacific, a specimen previously unknown to science was caught, revealing an entirely new species and genus of shark. Fewer than 100 individuals have been observed since, making it one of the latest zoological discoveries among large sharks.
In 1977, near the Galápagos Islands, the discovery of animal communities thriving around hydrothermal vents, with no sunlight at all, upended biology by revealing the existence of ecosystems based on chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis. The giant tube worm, which has no mouth or stomach, is one of its emblematic inhabitants.
In July 2003, Scott Benson's team fitted satellite tags on leatherback turtles nesting on Jamursba-Medi beach in West Papua, Indonesia. One of them was tracked for 647 days, travelling at least 20,558 kilometres across the Pacific to feeding grounds off Oregon, USA, before starting the journey back. Published in 2007, the study documents one of the longest migrations ever recorded in a marine vertebrate.
In 2004, off the coast of Japan, a giant squid was filmed and photographed alive in its natural habitat for the first time, ending centuries during which the species was known only from stranded carcasses and sailors' tales that fed the legend of the Kraken.
In 2005, near Easter Island in the South Pacific, the discovery of a deep-sea crustacean with bristle-covered claws revealed an entirely new species and genus to science, associated with the hydrothermal vents of the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge.
On 21 January 2007, a Japanese fisherman found a 1.6-metre female frilled shark alive at the surface off Shizuoka, likely driven up from the depths by illness or unusually warm water. Taken to Awashima Marine Park, she was filmed alive before dying a few hours later. This species, which normally lives between 600 and 1,000 metres deep, had never before been observed alive at the surface: according to the marine park, these are the earliest known moving images of a living specimen.
On 10 July 2012, off the Ogasawara Islands, Japanese zoologist Tsunemi Kubodera, biologist Edith Widder and cephalopod specialist Steve O'Shea filmed a giant squid actively swimming at a depth of about 630 metres from a submersible. Unlike the first photographs taken in 2004, of an animal hooked and hauled to the surface, this footage was the first to show the species moving freely in its natural habitat, captured using a red-light and bioluminescent-lure camera system designed by Edith Widder.