New-to-science snailfish found off coast of Nova Scotia's Sable Island

Beyond the coast of Nova Scotia’s Sable Island, researchers have discovered a new species that was previously unknown to science.

The tiny snailfish that's been named Psednos gulliensis was collected in a deepsea canyon during a research survey using a net towed through the water.

The name of the creature — which is a fish, not a snail — reflects where it was found, in the Gully Marine Protected Area, the largest underwater canyon in the western North Atlantic.

Trevor Kenchington, a research scientist with the Bedford Institute of Oceanography, says the sample was actually collected around 16 years ago in the Gully.

“On the last of our surveys in 2010, we caught this thing,” he said in an interview with CBC's Information Morning. “Our [researchers] working in the lab put it in a jar and said, ‘it’s Psednos,’ but we didn’t know what species it was.”

But then the sample was lost, Kenchington said, and was only found again in 2024 when he and other researchers were looking for an entirely different species. He took the specimen to an expert, who confirmed it was different from anything they’d seen.

“So, we got to describe a new species,” he said.

About four centimetres long, the snailfish has a pinkish body and a dark-coloured head that makes up a good portion of its size. Kenchington said that's typical of animals that live in depths ranging from 200 to 1,000 metres below the water's surface.

“When anything lives in mid-water, deep down, there’s very little food to be found,” he explained. “So when a fish finds any prey at all, it has to be ready to swallow whatever it’s found, so they tend to have large mouths, big stomachs … and then [they] digest until they find the next bit of food.”

Kenchington said he chose to name the species to recognize where the sample was found in Atlantic Canada's oldest marine protected area. The Gully, 2,364 square kilometres of ocean near Sable Island, was designated for protection under the Oceans Act in 2004.

“I’ve spent the last nearly 20 years working on everything coming from our surveys from the Gully, and it was a nice thing to be able to give something back and name it after the MPA.”

There were only two known Psednos species at the turn of the century, he said. This most recent discovery is the 36th.

“You would think that in this huge space of dark, deep mid-water that there wouldn’t be that many reasons to have more than a few species,” Kenchington said. “So when you find another [species], there’s a good chance it's going to be something new to science.”

He said finding and documenting new species is crucial in knowing how marine ecosystems work, which is important in knowing how to protect them.