Novel metaphorical expressions are understudied in traditional approaches to terminology because they behave as sporadic units incapable of structuring whole discourse events. To show that this assumption is wrong, this paper presents a case study of novel bioeconomics metaphors in an academic marine biology research article (Landa 1998). They were analysed following the Career of Metaphor Theory (Bowdle and Gentner 2005), a framework for the description of novel metaphor in usage, and the text-linguistics approach to term description (Collet 2004), which suggests criteria for term definition that challenge the tenets of monolithic terminology models. The analysis of unexpected metaphors identified in the text suggests that these units should be considered proto-terms experienced as deliberate rhetorical and conceptual devices. Pragmatically speaking, the metaphors are part and parcel of the writer’s discursive strategy to communicate specialised knowledge to her peers. Conceptually speaking, the metaphors are essential building blocks of the article’s mental model.