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Vantablack absorbs up to 99.96% and the species of fish absorbs 99.95%. They must be talking about certain cells or pigments rather than the entire fish since they do not appear ultra-black in the images I see.

Found in the paper:

> We used a back-reflectance probe calibrated to a 2% diffuse reflectance standard to measure the reflectance at perpendicular incidence from the blackest undamaged patches of skin.




The sublinked NYTime article on ultra-black does a good job explaining both biological and manufactured blackest-of-blacks (with carbon nanotubes):

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/11/science/black-fashion-phy...

Although predating the fish study.




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