Quiz: New Zealand's ugliest fishesThere are some bizarre looking fish that live in the depths of New Zealand’s waters. Corporate partnerships Hononga kaipakihi.Friends of Te Papa: Our membership programme Ngā Hoa o Te Papa: Te hōtaka mema.Media sales and licensing Te hohoko papāho me te manatā.Past exhibitions Ngā whakaaturanga o mua.Touring exhibitions Ngā whakaaturanga poi haere.Guides to caring for objects Tiaki Kohinga, Tiaki Taonga.For museums and galleries Mō ngā muhiama me ngā whare toi.Read, watch, play Kōrero, mātaki, purei.Discover the collections Tūhuratia ngā kohinga.Meanwhile the blobfish would just look like….well…. So why do we think the world is too hard on the blobfish? Because if we put you 4,000 feet below the water your organs would be crushed and you’d probably be turned into some sort of paste. In fact, super-deep water fish often have minimal skeletons and jelly-like flesh, because the only way to combat the extreme pressure of deep water is to have water as your structural support.” Henry Reich for Minute Earth: “Unlike most other fish, the ones that live in these depths don’t have gas-filled cavities like swim bladders that would collapse under the extreme pressure. But without this particular make-up, down at depth, it’d be dead. The blobfish doesn’t really have a skeleton, and it doesn’t really have any muscle. But that doesn’t mean it’s holding up well in the atmosphere.

The blobfish doesn’t have a swim bladder, so its stomach got to stay inside its body. See what we mean about the blobfish doing okay? Because of the expansion of their air sac, there is a risk that their insides will be pushed out through their mouth, thereby killing them.” (Emphasis added.) When you take fish with swim bladders out of their natural habitats that air sac “may expand when they rise. Many fish have something called a swim bladder, sacs of air in their body that help them move around and stay buoyant. And, likewise, the blobfish really doesn’t like being up here. You wouldn’t want to be down there without an intense submarine. Down there, the pressure is up to 120 times higher than it is at the surface. Psychrolutes marcidus are a deep water fish that live off the coast of Australia, somewhere between 2,000 and 4,000 feet beneath the waves. Honestly, we think that droopy blobfish up there is actually holding up alright considering everything it’s been through. As the Society says: “The panda gets too much attention.”īut though the cause may by noble, we think the world was too hard on our friend the blobfish (or, if you want to call him by his proper name-and really, he’d prefer it if you would!- Psychrolutes marcidus). The Society was looking for a mascot, an ugly mascot, a champion for all the animals out there whose unappealing visages garner them less support then their cute and cuddly brethren. The run-off was led by the Ugly Animal Preservation Society. Yesterday, after the votes were cast and tallied, the blobfish was deemed the world’s ugliest animal. It’s that time again, when the whole world gathers together to pick on the blobfish.

Ugly fish underwater