Meet Red Handfish, the endangered 'walking' fish that became Photo Ark's 18,000th species

A critically endangered female red handfish, Thymichthys politus. (Photo: Joel Sartore) For 20 years, photographer Joel Sartore has been building a huge visual record of the world’s animals. His project, called the Photo Ark, has now reached another major milestone with its 18,000th species- the critically endangered red handfish. The milestone photo was announced by the National Geographic Society last week.The red handfish is a tiny marine fish that looks quite different from most fish. It uses its fins to move along the seafloor, almost as if it is walking. The animal is about the size of a thumb.Sartore photographed the red handfish at a breeding laboratory at the University of Tasmania’s Institute of Marine and Antarctic Studies. He set up a small photo tank on a tabletop and photographed them. “We put one in our little fish tank, and it kind of walks around,” Sartore says, as quoted by Smithsonian magazine.How Photo Ark beganThe first Photo Ark species was a naked mole-rat photographed at the Lincoln Children’s Zoo in Nebraska on August 9, 2006. Sartore had already worked as a field photographer for National Geographic magazine before.The idea for the project came after a dif...