A giant seabug which loves the dark side has been named after Star Wars’ most famous Sith lord.
Bathynomus vaderi is an isopod related to woodlice, capable of growing up to 32.5cm.
Its size is comparable to a rabbit or even a young cat, weighing over 1kg.
First brought to the surface by deep sea trawlers, it has become an expensive delicacy in Vietnam where some say it tastes better than lobster (although we’ll take their word for it).
After being sold for meat in fishmongers and restaurants, they came to the attention of scientists, who realised they were an entirely new species.
Not only that, but they looked quite familiar…
The seabugs got their name thanks to their faces looking similar to Vader’s helment, and their pale, segmented bodies.
Like him, they love the darkness, and make their home far below where the sun can penetrate.
They are mostly carniverous and feed on the scavenged dead bodies of whales, fish, and squid.
While it is known as a seabug (“bọ biển), it is not actually a bug. It is a crustacean, so more closely related to crab and lobster.
They have so far only been found near the Spratly Islands in Vietnam, but are thought to be found in other parts of the South China Sea. Perhaps further afield too, given we still know little about the deep ocean where it lives, which is a problem Vaderi’s discovery neatly illustrates.
Isopods like this are sought after for their flesh, and are kept alive and on display in chilled tanks in some restaurants, like other sea food.
A study published yesterday tells how staff from Hanoi University bought specimens from dealers in March 2022.
They sent them to Peter Ng of the University of Singapore, who has a crustacean laboratory.
In early 2023, they realised the Vaderi species had not yet been described, and detailed their findings in the open-access journal ZooKeys.
The authors said: ‘The discovery of a species as strange as Bathynomus vaderi in Vietnam highlights just how poorly we understand the deep-sea environment.
‘That a species as large as this could have stayed hidden for so long reminds us just how much work we still need to do.
‘There is an urgent need to better understand our deep-sea biodiversity as humans increasingly endeavour to exploit this habitat for fisheries, oil and gas, and even minerals.
‘The sustainable fishery of giant isopods just adds to the many challenges we face. And the first step is to know what lives there.’
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