At a depth of 2,577 metres, where no sunlight has ever reached, a small pale sea cucumber drifts above the canyon floor with a crown of curved horns on its back. When the scientists who found it finally saw the photographs, the name came almost by itself: Loki, after the horned trickster god of Norse legend.
On 1 October 2026, Argentina's national research council CONICET confirmed that a two-week workshop in Buenos Aires had identified 57 marine species and five whole genera new to science, all drawn from a single hidden world off the Argentine coast — the Mar del Plata Submarine Canyon [ref:1].
A canyon that out-deeps the Grand Canyon
The Mar del Plata Canyon slices into the South Atlantic seabed to depths of more than 3,500 metres — roughly twice as deep as Arizona's Grand Canyon [ref:3]. Until recently, no human eye had ever observed its floor. That changed in 2025, when the 110-metre research vessel Falkor (too), operated by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, lowered its remotely operated vehicle SuBastian into the dark and streamed the first live video of Argentina's deep sea to millions of viewers around the world [ref:2].
The two weeks that named a hidden world
Fast-forward to July 2026. From 13 to 24 July, twenty taxonomists and early-career researchers from across Latin America and Europe gathered at Universidad Maimónides in Buenos Aires, working shoulder to shoulder with Argentina's CONICET and the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales. Their tools were microscopes, patience, and a new idea about speed.
Led by the Nippon Foundation–Nekton Ocean Census, the team used integrative taxonomy to work through the preserved haul, logging every find directly into Ocean Census NOVA — the world's first open-access data platform for newly discovered marine species [ref:1].
The results read like a naturalist's wish list:
- 22 echinoderms — sea cucumbers and crinoids, including Loki (Peniagone sp.)
- 20 copepods — minute crustaceans that anchor every deep-sea food web
- 14 cnidarians — octocorals, sea pens, and stony corals
- 1 scaphopod — a tusk-shell mollusc [ref:2]
The trickster's little secret
The most astonishing number is also the smallest one: ten. Taxonomists examined just ten per cent of the collected copepod samples — and every single specimen they opened turned out to be a species unknown to science, yielding 20 new species and one new genus in that fraction alone [ref:2].
Dr Michelle Taylor, head of science at Ocean Census, called it a demonstration of "the speed and power of collaborative taxonomy" — proof that when international specialists pool their expertise, the ocean's backlog of unnamed life starts moving fast [ref:2].
The door is already opening again
Argentina's deep-sea research group, GEMPA, and the Schmidt Ocean Institute are already planning a return voyage for February–March 2027, heading for different submarine canyons where biodiversity is expected to be just as rich [ref:1].
Somewhere down there, another trickster is waiting for its name.
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