A group of researchers has discovered in the waters of Vietnam a new species of isopod or giant sea scale insect that reaches 32.5 cm in length, the size of a bulldog. The “supergiant” creature, which weighs one kilo, has been named Bathynomus vaderi by the appearance of his head, which closely resembles Darth Vader’s distinctive helmet from Star Wars.
So far, this new species has only been found near the Spratly Islands in Vietnam, but further research is likely to confirm its presence in other parts of the South China Sea.
Giant isopods like Bathynomus vaderi They have become an expensive delicacy in Vietnam. Until 2017, local fishermen only sold them as a fishing product at low prices, but in recent years the media has drawn public attention to this unusual seafood. Some even claim that it is more delicious than lobster.
These animals have been caught commercially by trawlers operating in several deep-water areas of Biển Đông (East Sea, Vietnamese part of the South China Sea) and in the high seas of the south-central coastal provinces of Vietnam. In the past five years, it has become common to see them sold alive in some seafood markets in Hanoi, Ho Chí Minh City and Da Nang City. Some establishments and restaurants even advertise the sale of these “sea bugs” online on various social media platforms. They even explain how to cook them better.
In March 2022, staff at the University of Hanoi purchased four giant isopods from Quy Nhơn City and sent two of them to Peter Ng of the Lee Kong Chian Museum of Natural History at the National University of Singapore for identification. Peter Ng studied the specimens with Conni M. Sidabalok of Indonesia’s National Research and Innovation Agency and Nguyen Thanh Son of Vietnam National University. In early 2023, they realized they had individuals of a hitherto undescribed species. Now, they have published their findings in the journal ‘ZooKeys’.
Left, Conni Sidabalok examines individuals of Bathynomus vaderi at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, Singapore. On the right, Nguyen Thanh Son holds a specimen of another species of giant isopod found in Vietnam that weighed 2.62 kg at a seafood market in Hanoi, October 2024
Know what lives there
According to researchers, the discovery of a species as strange as Bathynomus vaderi in Vietnam highlights how little we know about the deep sea environment. The fact that a species as large as this has been able to remain hidden for so long “reminds us how much work we still have to do to discover what lives in the waters of Southeast Asia.”
For the authors, it is urgent to better understand the biodiversity of the deep sea, as humans increasingly try to exploit this habitat for fishing, oil and gas extraction and even minerals. ‘Sustainable fishing for giant isopods only compounds the many challenges we face. The first step is to know what lives there,” they say.
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