We Need to Talk About the Blobfish

Is its status as a joke species warranted?

At some point over the past four or five years, you probably stumbled across this image.

               This poor creature is the blobfish (Psychrolutes marcidus), and you can see why it was voted the world’s ugliest animal back in 2013. With its misshapen body and comically large nose (can we call it a nose?), the blobfish has been the butt of many jokes over the years. But does it really deserve its negative meme status?

               One of the key characteristics of the blobfish is its normal environment. When it’s not posing for pictures on the surface, the blobfish lives in the deep sea around Australia. And when I say deep sea, it’s not like the deep end of a pool. We’re talking between 2000-4000 feet below sea level.

Pressure Building

               Imagine diving into a pool and swimming to the bottom. You can feel the pressure in your ears as your body adjusts to depth. The reason you feel this pressure is because water weighs more than air. Our bodies function best at an ambient pressure of 1 atmosphere, or the weight of a column of air at sea level.

When you move into deeper water, your body has to adjust to a lot more weight on it.

In fact, to double the amount of pressure on your body, you would only have to dive down to 10 meters, or 33 feet! This is much deeper than an average swimmer might find themselves, though scuba divers regularly reach this depth.

               This 10 meter column of water, by itself, weighs about 2000 lbs/ft². However, blobfish are found much deeper than this. In their habitat, the water pressure can be over 200 times what we experience at the surface. This sheer amount of pressure would instantly squish a human.

               So why are we talking so much about pressure? Because blobfish, along with many other species of deep sea fish, are uniquely adapted to surviving at this pressure. And they survive by using that pressure to their advantage.

               Rather than growing large muscles and bones to hold their bodies together, they focus more on fat storage, resulting in flabby, fleshy bodies. Though gross, they rely on the water pressure to hold their bodies together, resulting in a very normal looking fish!

               Imagine being dragged to the bottom of the ocean over the course of an hour. Our bodies would look completely different! Well, the reverse is happening to the blobfish in this picture. By removing it from its natural habitat, we are taking away the force holding its body shape, resulting in a floppy mess.

               So please, have mercy on the poor blobfish. It doesn’t deserve our ridicule, but rather our respect, for adapting so well to a very difficult environment.

For more fishy facts, read more of my posts here.

Curious about the ocean itself? Learn about how it works here.