Divers 'enchanted' by colourful new species of reef fish fail to spot huge shark cruising above them

Scientists were so “enchanted” by the neon-bright appearance of a new species of reef fish that they were oblivious to a large shark cruising above them.

Video captures the moment a 10ft sixgill shark lazily glides above diver Luiz Rocha and his colleagues as they attempt to gather a sample of Tosanoides aphrodite, a brightly-coloured anthias reef fish.

The encounter took place at St Paul’s Rocks, a miniscule archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic north-east of Brazil, Dr Rocha said in a new study published in ZooKeys alongside colleagues Hudson Pinheiro and Claudia Rocha.

“The fish was so stunning that we couldn’t take our eyes off of it and never even saw the shark,” he told The Independent, adding that the only person to spot the shark was safety officer Mauritius Valente Bell, who also filmed the incident.

“There’s a lot of preparation that goes into doing those dives, the amount of gear that we use is insane," he said. "And it’s a very risky activity, but when we come back from [an] expedition with a new species like this, we look back and see that everything was worth it.”

Sixgill sharks are not thought to pose a threat to humans.

The research group discovered T. aphrodite at a depth of 120m. They said it was the first species of that genus to be found outside the Pacific ocean.

“The beauty of the Aphrodite anthias enchanted us during its discovery much like Aphrodite’s beauty enchanted ancient Greek gods,” they wrote in the study, describing the fish’s extraordinary colouring.

The male of the species has bright pink stripes on its yellow body, and green fins tinged purple on its tail, while females are a solid, blood-orange colour. They are only about 6cm long, the study said.

Claudia Rocha, a laboratory and collections manager at the California Academy of Sciences, said in a statement: “In a time of global crisis for coral reefs, learning more about unexplored reef habitats and their colourful residents is critical to our understanding of how to protect them.

“We aim to highlight the ocean’s vast and unexplored wonders and inspire a new generation of sustainability champions.”