It probably wasn’t on your 2026 bingo card, but two new spiders have been discovered in the Salish Sea, including near Vancouver.
If you’re a little squeamish around spiders, it won’t help to know that one of them has hairy legs, according to UBC researchers.
UBC’s Alex Walls writes that if you’re going for a swim and feel a tip-tapping up your calves, “don’t worry, it’s probably just the stuff of nightmares: hairy-legged, red-eyed sea spiders newly discovered by UBC researchers.”
The discoveries are apparently the first in almost a century. The nightmare fuel doesn’t end there, though, as Walls notes the discoveries are “horrifyingly fascinating.”
Cromac Toler-Scott, lead author of the study on these sea spiders, conducted the work as part of his master’s degree in zoology at UBC.
“I was interested in how sea spiders are impacted by climate change and human disturbance, because marine invertebrates in the Salish Sea are particularly at risk, and I couldn’t find anything,” Toler-Scott said.
That’s largely because people don’t know much about what species exist here and what their lifestyle is,” he added.
Toler-Scott said that to understand how marine invertebrates are being impacted by climate change, and to find out how better to protect these “key elements of the ecosystem,” researchers first have to be able to identify them.
Now the fun part: the pictures.
First, meet Callipallene pilosuspedes, one of the new spiders discovered near Vancouver.
Cormac Toler-Scott/UBC
And here’s Tanystylum kiixin:
Those bumps along its limbs are eggs forming 😵💫 (Cormac Toler-Scott/UBC)
UBC notes that sea spiders breathe through their skin and that males rear the young.
“Females have ovaries spread throughout their limbs that produce eggs which then ‘pop out’ of a dedicated pore. During mating, the male will use limbs placed at the base of his head called ‘ovigers’ to scoop up the eggs, dab them in a glue secreted from his legs, and stick them to his own body in clusters of egg sacs for rearing,” Walls notes in graphic detail.
Researchers collected the new species between September 2023 and August 2024, involving dives up to 18 metres deep, in habitats and areas that included Quadra Island, Vancouver, Bamfield, and Victoria.
“In tribute to the long, curved spines covering its lower legs, one of the new species is named Callipallene pilosuspedes, a play on the Latin for ‘hairy feet.’”
If you’ve ever wanted a close-up on a spider’s mouth, here you go:
“The three-lipped, tendril-filled mouth of the Callipallene pilosuspedes at 30 micrometres.” (Cormac Toler-Scott/UBC)
Apparently, the highly dexterous ovigers also serve as a type of comb for the spider to groom or comb itself for cleaning purposes.
The other species, Tantystylum kiixin, was named after the Indigenous village site near where specimens were first collected. It’s pronounced kee-hin, and the word comes from the sound of waves crashing at the base of the village site.
“Its egg-carrying limbs are much smaller and less dexterous, leaving the animal unable to groom itself effectively.”
The research is the “first comprehensive study of sea spiders in the Salish Sea using both detailed imaging and DNA analysis,” UBC notes.
Toler-Scott says that more are waiting ot be found.
“I only had one field season, but there’s definitely more diversity out there that we haven’t documented,” he said.
While it might make some squeamish, in the immortal words of Jesse Pinkman: “Yeah, science!”
You can read more about the spiders discovered near Vancouver in the recent publication in Organisms Diversity & Evolution.