Commercially Important Fish Found Congregating at Methane Seep Off Chile

by Alex Fox, Scripps Institution of Oceanography – UC San Diego
October 20, 2025

A team of scientists from Chile and the United States discovered dozens of red cusk-eels, fish prized in Chilean seafood markets and celebrated in a poem by renowned Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, embedded in a bushy thicket of tubeworms at a methane seep off the coast of central Chile. 

This is the first time this commercially important species has been documented using methane seeps as habitat. It’s not yet clear what drew the fish to the methane seep, but some evidence suggests the fish may have been receiving a parasite cleaning from resident spider crabs.

“Methane seeps are important places for deep-sea biodiversity,” said Lisa Levin, co-author of a study detailing the discovery and professor emeritus at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. “Our findings show these seeps are not just home to communities of obscure creatures that are cut off from the rest of the deep sea. They are also important for commercially fished species and may be much more connected to the rest of the ocean than one might expect.”

The discovery places the cusk-eels among a small but growing list of other commercially significant species using methane seeps. The study was published Oct. 18 in the journal Ecology. The research was supported by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and funded by the National Science Foundation.

Keep reading: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/news/commercially-important-fish-found-congregating-methane-seep-chile

Read the Ecology paper: https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ecy.70237