Fish
Blobfish
Psychrolutes marcidus · also called blobfish
The blobfish only looks like a sagging, melted internet meme after it has been hauled up from the crushing pressure of the deep sea. At home, hundreds of metres down, its low-density body holds a perfectly ordinary fish shape, drifting near the seafloor on almost no energy at all.
Overview
Blobfish live in deep waters off Australia and New Zealand, typically 600 to 1,200 metres down. About 25–30 cm, their soft, low-density flesh is slightly less dense than seawater, letting them hover near the seafloor with minimal effort while feeding on small invertebrates.
Pressure changes everything
Deep-sea pressure supports its soft body into a normal fish shape. Once removed from that pressure, the tissue sags into the famous droopy form seen in viral photos.
An unlikely celebrity
A photo of a surfaced specimen made it an internet sensation, voted the world’s ugliest animal — despite looking nothing like that at depth.
Status
The blobfish is Not Evaluated, with some concern over bycatch in deep-sea trawl fisheries.
Blobfish: common questions
Why does the blobfish look so different in photos than it actually is underwater?
At the great depths it naturally inhabits, typically 600 to 1,200 metres down, the surrounding water pressure is many dozens of times greater than at the surface, and this immense pressure actually helps support and shape the blobfish's soft, low-density tissues into something resembling an ordinary fish body. When a specimen is caught and hauled up to the surface, that supporting pressure disappears almost entirely within minutes, causing its soft flesh to sag, droop, and collapse into the famously melted, gelatinous shape seen in viral photographs, an appearance that has nothing to do with how the fish actually looks or behaves in its natural deep-sea environment.
How was the blobfish voted the world's ugliest animal?
A photograph taken of a blobfish specimen after it had already been brought up from the deep sea and had lost its natural underwater shape circulated widely online and in media coverage, presenting the fish in its sagging, distorted post-capture state rather than its actual living appearance. This image was submitted to and won an online poll run by a wildlife conservation organisation seeking to raise awareness of endangered and unusual-looking species, and the resulting title and subsequent internet meme status made the blobfish one of the most recognisable deep-sea animals in popular culture, despite most people never having seen what it genuinely looks like at depth.
How does the blobfish survive in the deep sea without much muscle?
Rather than actively swimming to stay off the seafloor the way a typical fish does using muscle power and a gas-filled swim bladder, which would not function properly under the crushing pressure of the deep sea, the blobfish's entire body is composed of a soft, gelatinous material with a density slightly lower than the surrounding seawater. This allows it to remain gently buoyant and hover just above the seafloor with essentially no active effort, an extremely energy-efficient adaptation well suited to the deep sea's scarce food supply, since it can simply wait for small invertebrate prey to drift within reach rather than expending precious energy pursuing it.
Is the blobfish endangered?
It has not been formally assessed by the IUCN Red List, so no official conservation status currently exists, but there is genuine concern among some researchers because the blobfish is frequently caught as unintentional bycatch in deep-sea bottom-trawling operations that target commercially valuable species such as crabs and lobsters in the same deep waters off Australia and New Zealand. Because deep-sea fish in general tend to grow slowly, reproduce at low rates, and are poorly studied compared to shallow-water species, there is reasonable concern that sustained bycatch pressure could affect blobfish populations meaningfully even without deliberate targeted fishing.