Ocean creature — with ‘enlarged teeth’ — found as new species off India. See it
.jpg "Off the coast of Kerala, India, a trawling net caught a new species of bottom-dweller.")
Off the coast of India, a trawling net pulled behind a boat captured a collection of croaker fish.
The fish were packaged up in an ice box and sent to a lab where they were cleaned, photographed and identified.
But one of the croakers didn’t look like the others. It is a species new to science.
The fish was caught in the Kalamukku Fishing Harbour a few days before Christmas in 2023, according to a study published Oct. 1 in the peer-reviewed journal Zoosystematics and Evolution.
Measuring about 5.5 inches long, the croaker is “oval-shaped” and generally a “small-sized fish,” according to the study.
It was named Johnius medidentatus, or the moderate-toothed croaker, researchers said.
Compared to other croaker species, the new fish has “enlarged teeth in the inner row of (the) lower jaw moderate in size,” according to the study.
When the fish is first caught it is “grey with a silverish sheen and a bluish tinge,” researchers said, with “pale yellow” fins and a “few dusky spots on (the) upper lips.”
The other key differences between the new species and other croakers lie within the body.
The fish’s sagittal otolith, one of the small “stones” found in the ear of the fish, is “triangular shaped” with a “tadpole shaped impression,” according to the study.
The gas bladder, or swim bladder, is “hammer-shaped” and covered with tree-like appendages, researchers said.
Swim bladders are used by fish to maintain their buoyancy in the water, filling the organ with gas to help them stay in position without constant swimming.
“This species has a wide distribution along the Indian coastline: off Mumbai coast, Karnataka, Kerala coast, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal; both from the east and west coasts of India,” according to the study.
The new species belongs to a group of fish known as Sciaenidae, commonly called drums or croakers. They are typically bottom-feeding fish that feed along the seabed.
They earn their name from a “croaking” sound they can produce, believed to be used as a mating call or possibly as an aggressive warning to other fish during feeding.
“All the sciaenid has differential preferences by people along the Indian coastline, and it was observed that this species, though earlier unrecognized and confused in identity with other Johnius species, was found to be consumed domestically and has commercial importance like other sciaenids,” according to the study.
The research team includes Keisham Geenita, Annam Pavan-Kumar, Shashi Bhushan, Sukham Monalisha Devi and Ashok Kumar Jaiswar.
This story was originally published October 6, 2025 at 12:34 PM with the headline "Ocean creature — with ‘enlarged teeth’ — found as new species off India. See it."
