Rare Handfish That Walked In Water Is Extinct Due To Destructive Fishing Practices

Human activity has known to destroy the lives of other creatures that live on the planet with us.

Deforestation, mining, fishing all have caused the destruction of habitats and eventual extinction of some creatures. And today, scientists share that human activity has made yet another rare species of fish go extinct.

Andrew Green./ Mongabay

This time, it¡¯s the smooth handfish. Researchers claim that the species of this beautiful handfish has been wiped from the southeastern Australian waters, according to Flaura-Fauna.org.

Handfish: Interesting facts on the extinct fish

This handfish was essentially a bottom-dweller, meaning the fish was mostly found on the surfaces underwater, instead of swimming higher like other fishes since it doesn¡¯t really have a swim bladder.

In a fish, the swim bladder helps the fish to maintain its buoyancy Instead, the fish got pectoral fins -- flat like human feet -- that it used to walk on the seabed. Atop their head is a bright coloured antenna to attract the prey

Discovered in the early 1800s by French zoologist Fran?ois P¨¦ron, only four of 13 species of smooth handfish have been found since 2000, meaning many more species might have phased out due to extinction.

Australian National Fish Collection, CSIRO

Researchers claim that the smooth handfish is now extinct primarily due to the destruction of the habitat for the fish -- primarily by gruesome fishing practices.

In their Redlist assessment, researchers state that, ¡°the species was probably impacted, through both direct mortality as bycatch and destruction of habitat, by the large historical scallop fishery that was active in the region through the 20th century until the fishery collapsed in 1967.¡±

Researchers claim that fishermen weren¡¯t really hunting for smooth handfish, but instead for scallops (which are also found on the seabed) would lay traps to catch them. However, most of the time, the soft handfish would often get trapped in these scallops nets.

Flickr: John Tumbull

Jemina Stuart-Smith, the researcher at the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, said in a statement to Mongabay, ¡°I think people should be concerned about the extinction of any species, especially ones that humans are likely to have caused. We don't know enough about handfish to know what their ecological role is [and if extinction] will impact the ecosystems that they are a part [of], or whether it [the underlying causes] will lead to other extinctions. The smooth handfish became extinct before we had a chance to study them.¡±