{"id":162182,"date":"2025-09-17T02:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/162182\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T02:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T02:11:07","slug":"new-deep-sea-coral-species-discovered-in-waters-off-hawaii-named-after-star-wars-character","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/162182\/","title":{"rendered":"New deep-sea coral species discovered in waters off Hawaii named after \u2018Star Wars\u2019 character"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; A <a href=\"https:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/news\/article.php?aId=14141\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/manoa.hawaii.edu\/news\/article.php?aId=14141\">new species of deep-sea coral was discovered<\/a> a team of researchers, including an expert from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Scientists named the species Chewbacca coral, or Iridogorgia chewbacca, after the furry character in the \u201cStar Wars\u201d movies. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">It got the name because of its long, flexible branches, which researchers said looked \u201chairy,\u201d and its upright, standing appearance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The coral species was first seen in waters off Molokai back in 2006 and again near the Mariana Trench in 2016. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | text-start article-text\">Les Watling, a professor emeritus in UH Manoa\u2019s School of Life Sciences, recognized the coral while reviewing research from colleagues in China.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cSeeing this coral for the first time was unforgettable,\u201d Watling said. \u201cIts long, flexible branches and shape immediately reminded me of Chewbacca. Even after years of deep-sea work, discoveries like this still make me stop and take notice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Watling co-authored the study, which was published in Zootaxa, a peer-reviewed scientific journal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) &#8211; A new species of deep-sea coral was discovered a team of researchers, including an expert&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[1147,98431,55960,93476,192,11639,98430,20281,78669,1728,7986,79,7993,8038,6671],"class_list":["post-162182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-animals","tag-chewbacca","tag-coral","tag-discovered","tag-environment","tag-hawaii","tag-manoa","tag-marine","tag-professor","tag-research","tag-researchers","tag-science","tag-scientist","tag-species","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}