Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
There are nine species of snipe eel in three genera found between 300 and 600 meters in the Ocean’s midwater. Like many of the animals studied during the #OBVI #LivingBioreactors expedition with @SchmidtSciences, Labichthys shelter in the depths and make a daily migration toward surface waters to feed at night. This diel migration is the largest animal migration on Earth, and a major natural carbon-capture system. The science team is working in the Southwest Atlantic, in the deep waters off the coast of South America. They’re studying the gut microbiomes of vertically migrating animals and how they impact carbon storage in the deep sea.
“All snipe eels have beak-like mouths that are densely packed with hundreds of small, inward facing hooked teeth,” says Ichthyologist Megan Sorce. “This gives their jaws a texture that is very similar to the coarse side of Velcro.”
Sorce adds that rather than grabbing and biting their prey, they use these teeth to entangle the antennae of small crustaceans, such as shrimp. The name “snipe eel” refers to the group of wading birds that also possess long, curved, slender beaks.
(Special thanks to expedition team members Ben Frable, collection manager of the Marine Vertebrate Collection at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Sorce, who manages and cares for the ichthyology collection at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology, for their assistance with species identification and description.) Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute
There are nine species of snipe eel in three genera found between 300 and 600 meters in the Ocean’s midwater. Like many of the animals studied during the #OBVI #LivingBioreactors expedition with @SchmidtSciences, Labichthys shelter in the depths and make a daily migration toward surface waters to feed at night. This diel migration is the largest animal migration on Earth, and a major natural carbon-capture system. The science team is working in the Southwest Atlantic, in the deep waters off the coast of South America. They’re studying the gut microbiomes of vertically migrating animals and how they impact carbon storage in the deep sea.
“All snipe eels have beak-like mouths that are densely packed with hundreds of small, inward facing hooked teeth,” says Ichthyologist Megan Sorce. “This gives their jaws a texture that is very similar to the coarse side of Velcro.”
Sorce adds that rather than grabbing and biting their prey, they use these teeth to entangle the antennae of small crustaceans, such as shrimp. The name “snipe eel” refers to the group of wading birds that also possess long, curved, slender beaks.
(Special thanks to expedition team members Ben Frable, collection manager of the Marine Vertebrate Collection at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and Sorce, who manages and cares for the ichthyology collection at the Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology, for their assistance with species identification and description.) Credit: ROV SuBastian / Schmidt Ocean Institute
