"Never been seen" in the scientific literature, but if it's from Chile, presumably somebody there has seen it. Instead of sending an expedition, has anybody asked people who live near muddy beaches there if they recognize it?
You would think there would be a high school biology teacher in Chile who would be happy to press gang some students into a field trip to find the answer.
I wonder how long it would take a high school biology class to scour 2,700 miles of largely remote Chilean coastline for an animal less than half an inch long?
Not so much as you think. Biologists are trained for many years to know where to look for. There are lots of species of Amphipods, but obviously you can discard most species and quickly delimit it to family level if you have a microscope.
In this case you need to be able to recognise only one species that is named and described and the genus can be assured looking at the third segment of the peduncle in the first antenna, eyes medium, gnathopod 1 fully subchelate, etc, etc.
Scholars should focuse in your studies, and let this kind of work for professionals, obviously. Amphipod specimens need to be dissected for identification, and is too easy to misplace, mistake or miss important facts, distroying unique valuable specimens for nothing.
There are chilean experts in amphipods also, Gonzalez, Morrone, De los Ríos-Escalante or Rivera for example. Their address and email are very easy to find. Is unclear if Mr. Bousfield tried to communicate with they, but if not, probably should try it first.
I had identified amphipods after its remains (there was two or three legs, half a head, part of the coxas and so), and is feasible, but not easy. Inside the chilean complex of this species would be even more dificult. High school students can't really do it, and local fishermen do not have this knowledge or the tools to adquire it.
I can think only in one reason to not contact the chilean biologists, or visit Chile, and is a language barrier, easy to overcome since we have google translate and similar tools.
On the other hand, amphipods are really easy to keep in aquariums for many months. Females incubate its eggs under the legs in a sort of pouches (kangaroo style) and there is often a clear and obvious sexual dimorphism, so their reproductive life is not dificult to study at all. You can easily observe the breeding behaviour, clutch size, embriology, hatching, season and number of generations by year. Why they didn't it in all of those years is a mystery to me. (Shrug) maybe fear that the species would be disclosed as belonging to a yet described species and became a synonym?.
Good point. Muddy beaches near ports that were active when these types of ships needed ballast. There's a port at San Antonio west of Santiago. Maybe ask someone around there?
As ricardobeat points out, this isn't a difficult barrier to overcome now and hasn't been at any point since the guy started inquiring about it. The "puzzle" remains because it's neither important nor interesting, not because it would be difficult to solve.
This is the kind of San Francisco I like to remember: quirky, interesting, explorable, next-to-nature, with a good dollop of history.
I used to visit SF every few months, but I haven't had an opportunity to return in the last ten years or so. From what I read on HN, and elsewhere, I'm not sure I'd want to.
Further Oakland is the third largest city in the Bay Area. San Francisco is the second largest city. So if we want to conflate the different cities here we might as well call them all San José since that's the largest city here.
Maybe the story is not that interesting after all? The guy spent 60 years building a career as a biologist, in the same area, and ended up never fully exploring it. Probably a lot of more important puzzles to work on.
Interesting by way of the continual conflict between authoritative sources (Western Science with certification) and local knowledge, where ever that is ... some elements of Western English-speaking society have recognized this and made concerted and codified efforts to bring local peoples into important discussions and fact-finding.
Specifically in this case, some local people far away from Oakland, California would be taken as real sources of information, rather than a literature search finding nothing and declaring the nature in question to be "unknown"
