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Smooth Handfish, Rest In Peace You Were Unique, And You’re Now Extinct

The swollen fish with an extraordinary appearance which has a feather above the head which resembles that of the mohawk, which has the ability to walk on the floor, has been declared extinct by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Documented by Down Under scientists, this species of fish swims in the warm waters of the coast of Tanzania. This type of fish 200 years ago was abundant, so it aroused the curiosity of scientists to make a documentary. Also known as the French hand fish, François Péron was the first to take the first pictures with his camera, after the fish was caught in a deep net in Southeast Tasmania, as this species lives in shallow water, IUCN said. During an interview.

Péron’s specimen (shown above) is now the only smooth handfish that scientists can investigate. It’s not as if researchers haven’t tried. According to a 2017 research published in the journal Biological Conservation, despite intensive underwater surveys around the Australian coastline, the smooth handfish hasn’t “been spotted for almost 200 years,” meaning Péron was the only scientist on record to capture one.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/

Only 13 other handfish species survive after the smooth handfish became extinct. All of the fish dwell on the bottom and “walk” with hand-like fins. Conservationists ecstatically revealed to the world in 2018 that they had found a previously undiscovered colony of red handfish (Thymichthys politus) consisting of between 20 and 40 individuals, according to Live Science.

Furthermore, handfish are solitary creatures with a small environment. In other words, the handfish have nowhere else to go if their habitats are disrupted.

“They spend the most of their time resting on the bottom, with the odd flap for a few meters if disturbed,” said Graham Edgar, a marine biologist at the University of Tasmania. “Handfish populations are extremely restricted and sensitive to hazards because they lack a larval stage and so are unable to spread to new sites.”

Handfish are threatened by the typical suspects that affect marine life, such as fishing, pollution, the spread of the invasive northern Pacific seastar (Asterias amurensis), and habitat loss, according to the IUCN. According to the IUCN, many handfish died as a result of a historic scallop fishery that existed in the region until 1967, primarily due to dredging the fishes’ habitat and bycatch (throwing away inadvertently captured fish, which often results in those fishes’ deaths).

On March 19, the Handfish Conservation Project tweeted on the fish’s extinction, writing, “All #handfish are now listed on the @IUCNRedList (Family Brachionichthyidae). The Smooth Handfish, Sympterichthys unipennis, is the first marine bony fish to be pronounced extinct.”

Meanwhile, according to the Handfish Conservation Project, no one has seen the related Ziebell’s handfish in over a decade. Another species, the red handfish, has a chance (pictured above). According to The Wonder Weekly, a journal published by the University of Tasmania and the Tasmanian government, the species has two known populations off the southeastern coast of Tasmania, and juvenile red handfish are now being reared in captivity in Tasmania.