A species dazzlingly revealed

Off the coast of Brazil, more than 120 metres below the surface of the ocean, lives a newly discovered, rare and strikingly beautiful fish.

Tosanoides aphrodite was discovered by a team of divers from the California Academy of Sciences, in the US, led by Luiz Rocha. It is formally described in the journal Zookeys.

Although startlingly obvious when photographed, T. aphrodite’s vivid pink colouring in reality serves to hide it from predators.

“Fishes from the twilight zone tend to be pink or reddish in colour,” says team member Hudson Pinheiro. “Red light doesn’t penetrate to these dark depths, rendering the fishes invisible unless illuminated by a light like the one we carry while diving.”