Queens High Schooler Helps Discover New Sea Creatures

BAYSIDE, QUEENS — A Queens high school student helped discover two new species of sea anemones, according to a study published last week by the American Museum of Natural History.

Cherie Qu, a Bayside native and a student at Bard High School Early College in Long Island City, was part of a four-person team that identified two new sea creatures, the Scolanthus shrimp and the Scolanthus celticus, according to the study and a news report in the Queens Daily Eagle.

She and Staten Island student Sadie Burke worked with two experts from the American Museum of Natural History's invertebrate zoology division to write the study as part of the museum's science research mentoring program.

The small burrowing sea anemones live off the coast of Ireland in a part of the deep sea called Whittard Canyon, the study says.

Scolanthus celticus is named for the Celtic Explorer, the ship that collected the anemone specimens, and the Scolanthus shrimp is named after Qu and Burke's program, called SRMP for short, according to the Queens Eagle.

The number of species fitting into the Scolanthus group of sea anemones has doubled in the past decade, the study says. There are now 14 species identified across the world.