Scientists Discover 16 ‘Ultra-Black’ Species that Absorb 99.9% of Light

Imagine a predator so well adapted to its deep, dark environment that light virtually slides off of them. Scientists were shocked to find 16 new fish species lurking, ninja like, in the shadows. The pigment in their skin is so “ultra-black” that they “absorb more than 99 percent of the light that hits their skin, making them virtually invisible to other deep-sea fish.”

As black as it gets

A gaggle of marine biologists went public with their findings in Current Biology, describing how they snared the super black fish “after dropping nets more than 200 meters deep near California’s Monterey Bay.” That’s a long way down.

“At those depths, sunlight fizzles out.” Because of that, countless numbers of deep-sea species learned to glow in the dark. They “have evolved the ability to illuminate the dark waters through bioluminescence.”

Not all fish like the neon advertising signs though. Especially the ones who like to have the flashy ones for dinner.

“To counter bioluminescence, some species have evolved ultra-black skin that’s exceptionally good at absorbing light.” There are a few critters on land that have similar characteristics. “including birds of paradise and some spiders and butterflies.”

The researchers didn’t notice anything exceptional at first because “it wasn’t immediately obvious that their skin was ultra-black.”

Marine biologist Karen Osborn was the first to detect something a little odd. “I had tried to take pictures of deep-sea fish before and got nothing but these really horrible pictures, where you can’t see any detail.”

Light just ‘disappears’

Ms. Osborn was stumped over how it was she could shine two strobe lights at them at the same time and “all that light just disappears.” She had to get out her microscope to figure it out.

“After examining samples of fish skin under the microscope, the researchers discovered that the fish skin contains a layer of organelles called melanosomes, which contain melanin, the same pigment that gives color to human skin and hair.” It’s this layer of black melanosomes which “absorbs most of the light that hits them.”

The thing that sets these ultra-black fish apart from the ordinary is the fact that any light that isn’t absorbed directly “side-scatters into the layer, and it’s absorbed by the neighboring pigments that are all packed right up close to it.”

Once again, Mother Nature knows best. “What they’ve done is create this super-efficient, very-little-material system where they can basically build a light trap with just the pigment particles and nothing else.”

The team identified a bunch of “strange and terrifying deep-sea species, like the crested bigscale, fangtooth, and Pacific blackdragon, all of which appear in the deep sea as barely more than faint silhouettes.” The thing that is most surprising is that the ultra-black camouflage “wasn’t passed on to these species by a common ancestor. Rather, they each developed it independently.” They also use the pigments in different ways.

The threadfin dragonfish only does the vanishing act “during its adolescent years, when it’s rather defenseless.” The oneirodes species “use bioluminescent lures to bait prey” so they “probably evolved ultra-black skin to avoid reflecting the light their own bodies produce.” Meanwhile, “species like C. acclinidens only have ultra-black skin around their gut, possibly to hide light of bioluminescent fish they’ve eaten.”