Not long ago, in a galaxy very, very near, scientists deployed a remotely operated vehicle to explore the crushing depths off the Hawaiian island of Moloka'i.
There, looming atop an unnamed seamount 663 meters (2,175 feet) below sea level, was a strange, cryptid-like creature covered in shaggy, hairy-looking branches.
It resembled the much-loved Star Wars wookie so much that the scientists decided to name this new species accordingly: meet Iridogorgia chewbacca.
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"Seeing this coral for the first time was unforgettable," says biologist Les Watling from the University of Hawai'i. "Its long, flexible branches and shape immediately reminded me of Chewbacca."
While there's no doubt that the coral looks an awful lot like Chewbacca, it is, like all corals, actually a colony of individual polyps, growing together to stand 51 centimeters tall.
All members of the Iridogorgia genus are deep-sea dwellers that shimmer with a metallic, iridescent luster for which they are named. These corals form long structures that spiral upward from the holdfast, attaching them to the seafloor.
"Even after years of deep-sea work, discoveries like this still make me stop and take notice," Watling says.
First sighted in 2006, another specimen of Iridogorgia chewbacca was discovered during a 2016 expedition near the Mariana Trench. Analysis of its genes and physical features has confirmed it as a new species.
"I think it is important to describe species from any under-explored region in order to get a sense of the level of biodiversity present as well as to use those species to help understand the biogeographic history of the region," Watling told Sciencealert.
Watling and his colleagues from the Chinese Academy of Sciences found an impressive diversity of Iridogorgia species in tropical Western Pacific waters, reporting a second new species, Iridogorgia curva, in the same study, along with 10 other species of the same genus – two of which had never been sighted in this region before.
"The deep sea is going to undergo some significant change in the next century or so. The deep water around Hawaii is about 500 to 1000 years old (most of it flowing north from the Antarctic)… so there is some possibility of it not warming up right away," Watling said.
"But other effects of the warming ocean could dictate changes at depth. It is imperative to know who is there, how old they are, what their reproductive capability is like."
The study was published in Zootaxa.