A fish with hands recently caught all the attention in the Cold Water category of Ocean Art 2022. The spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus), taken by photographer Nicolas Remy, doesn’t actually have real hands, but has special pectoral fins that it uses to walk on the seafloor.
The spotted handfish is critically endangered and only 3,000 are believed to remain in the wild. So it’s understandable that Remy took a nine-hour marathon dive into the Derwent River in Hobart, Tasmania, to take the picture. Remy chose this spot specifically to look for the fish, as it is known to be a frequent destination for spotted handfish, but with only two meters of visibility, the search was not an easy one.
The spotted handfish is a species of anglerfish found only in an area along the coasts of southeastern Australia and Tasmania. These fish eat crustaceans, worms and seashells and use their neighbors such as stalked ascidians and sponges to hang their eggs.
The unique nesting solution, unfortunately, does not appear to be very effective against infestation by north pacific starfish (Asterias amurensis) that live on stalked ascidians and their contained handfish eggs. This preference is thought to have contributed significantly to their being critically endangered, as categorized by the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
This is hardly good news for fifty fish, as its cousin, Sympterichtys unipennis, was the first marine fish species to be considered “modern extinction”.
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