A newly-discovered sea snail found in Cape Town’s Great African Seaforest has highlighted the remarkable biodiversity of our underwater kelp worlds!
Cape Town, South Africa (03 February 2026) – At a time when climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution continue to cause far-reaching impacts on the natural world, glimmers of hope still show up too.
Hope that encourages the protection of our seas and biodiversity-rich sea forests!
A team of scientists – including University of Cape Town’s Honours graduate Rebecca MacKinnon, Dr Jannes Landschoff of Sea Change Project (the NGO behind My Octopus Teacher) and Japanese experts Tsuyoshi Takano and Yasunori Kano – have discovered a tiny sea snail that represents not only a new species, but an entirely new genus!
The tiny snail (scientifically known as Introphiuricola rebeccae n. gen. n. sp.) is only 1mm in size and lives inside the brood chambers of the Equitailed brittlestar – a Tim Burton-worthy starfish cousin that crawls across the seafloor by whipping its flexible, serpent-like arms.
The newly-discovered species is parasitic – scientists believe it feeds off the fluid of its host’s chamber walls and use the brittlestar’s brood chamber to brood its own young.
It might sound like something out of Ridley Scott’s Alien movies, but it’s a remarkable, exciting discovery. It highlights the still-rich biodiversity of our kelp forest at a time when 60% of seaforests around the world have been degraded or have disappeared.
And it gives us hope for the many findings yet to be made in this incredible ecosystem. Yay for science!
Read more about it here.
Supported by funding from the Save our Seas Foundation through Sea Change Project’s 1001 Seaforest Species Project
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