Pacific Hagfish

• A single pinch on the tail of a 45 cm adult triggers the production of 0.9 litres of slime, some seven times the animal's own volume. No other material, biological or synthetic, expands so much in so little time.
• The slime forms in under half a second: coiled threads unwind and the mucus swells, trapping water and clogging the predator's mouth and gills.
• It has no jaws: it grips the flesh with rasping plates on its tongue and ties its own body into a knot to pull and tear it free.
• It is a scavenger: it finds a carcass by smell, enters through the mouth or the anus and consumes it from the inside out, leaving nothing but skin and bones.
• With its extremely slow metabolism it can go up to seven months without eating.
• Despite more than a century of searching, only some 200 fertilised eggs have been found in Monterey Bay: its reproduction remains a mystery.

Habitat and environment

Muddy bottoms of the eastern Pacific, from south-east Alaska to Baja California, between 16 and 966 m and mostly between 40 and 100 m; it shelters buried in the sediment

Sexual maturity

Length at first maturity 42 cm

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eptatretus_stoutii

The pins mark the parks and dive sites where its presence is documented.