What is it?
The Allonautilus scrobiculatus, otherwise known as the crusty nautilus, is native to the waters around New Guinea. The nautilus is a small, distant relative of squid and cuttlefish, and has been cited as a “living fossil” because its shell has been in the fossil record for over 500 million years. It has existed longer than all dinosaurs, and has also lived through the two largest mass extinctions in the history of Earth. Its appearance is decidedly alien, with its prehistoric lineage causing it to fall into an entirely sacrosanct category of animal.
Productive Research
According to genetic tests, the crusty nautilus is relatively young compared to its siblings, and behaves differently from other nautiluses. Peter Ward, a biologist and professor at the University of Washington, sought out the breed earlier this month in the South Pacific ocean. This was Ward’s second encounter with the mysterious ocean-dweller, as he first spotted the Allonautilus in 1984. He said: “Before this, two humans had seen Allonautilus scrobiculatus. My colleague Bruce Saunders from Bryn Mawr College found Allonautilus first, and I saw them a few weeks later.” The two scientists had collected several specimens for lab analysis during their first encounter with the creatures. They found that their gills, jaws, shell shape and male reproductive structures were significantly different from those of other nautilus species.
Ward added: “Some features of the nautilus — like the shell giving it the ‘living fossil’ label — may not have changed for a long time, but other parts have. It has this thick, hairy, slimy covering on its shell. When we first saw that, we were astounded.”
It is said that this particular breed of nautilus is much more reticent than its sibling species, and arose relatively recently according to genetic tests. Saunders spotted it again in 1986, but it completely disappeared until Ward’s recent return to Papua New Guinea to examine nautilus populations in general. According to Ward, all nautiluses are “expert scavengers,” so he and his team suspended pieces of chicken and fish from poles between 500 and 1,300 feet below the surface. They also set up cameras to film any activity around the bait for 12 hour periods.
Ward explained: “We started using this approach in 2011. This year, there were about 30 guys involved and each day we would all watch the movies from the night before at 8X speed. There were a lot of ‘ohs’ and ‘ahs’.” Apparently, one night the footage showed an Allonautilus that began to circle the bait. It was soon joined by a second Allonautilus, and the two proceeded to fight over the bait until a sunfish arrived. According to Ward, the fish whacked them with its tail for two hours.
On the most recent trip, Ward and his colleagues used baited traps positioned 600 feet underwater to collected specimens. Nautiluses are heat-averse, so the researchers brought them to the surface in cool water to get measurements, and small tissue, shell, and mucous samples before bringing them back to their capture sites and releasing them. From the samples, the team was reportedly able to determine the age and sex of each animal, as well as the extent of the diversity of each nautilus population in the South Pacific. They found that nautilus populations are generally isolated from each other because they are only able to live in narrow ranges of ocean depths. Ward said: “They swim just above the bottom of wherever they are. Just like submarines, they have ‘fail depths’ where they’ll die if they go too deep, and surface waters are so warm that they usually can’t go up there. Water about 2,600 feet deep is going to isolate them.” This means that nautilus populations can differ between islands and coral reefs. Also, once they leave one area, they never come back.
Ward said that he hopes to see Allonautilus again because he wants to study how this particular species behaves different from other nautiluses. However, its elusiveness makes this challenging. Ward explained: “It’s only near this tiny island. This could be the rarest animal in the world. We need to know if Allonautilus is anywhere else, and we won’t know until we go out there and look.”
More Money, More Problems
Unfortunately, nautiluses are facing extinction due to the illegal practice of nautilus ‘mining’. Indeed, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service FWS, the U.S. imports over 100,000 nautilus shells each year. The shells are sold on websites like Ebay or in stores nationwide, and are priced at anywhere from $15 to $900 (USD). However, Ward maintains that this trade is “unsustainable”, and will soon cause the permanent extinction of all nautilus species. He is intent on limiting – and hopefully banning – trade in nautilus shells. He commented: “There is no sustainable fishery for nautilus possible anywhere. They are on the knife-edge [of extinction].” Ward’s research has shown that nautilus populations in overly-harvested fishing areas – particularly in the Philippines – barely exist anymore. Several of his surveys show that there are 10 to 15 nautiluses per square kilometer in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, but hardly any in the Philippines’ Bohol Strait and several other prime fishing spots. Last year Ward called for the most well-known nautilus species, the Nautilus pompilius, to be listed as endangered.
Nautiluses currently have very few protections and no restrictions when it comes to international trade. No nautilus species currently appear on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Red List of Threatened Species either. Fortunately, this September, the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) will decide whether to advocate for nautiluses to become a protected species under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wildlife Fauna and Flora (CITES) treaty.
Hopefully, the entire nautilus species will soon receive all the respect that it deserves.
