"We predicted the deepest fish would be there and we predicted it would be a snailfish," he said. Prof Jamieson says the discovery of a fish deeper than those found in the Mariana Trench is probably due to the Izu-Ogasawara's slightly warmer waters. Likewise, their approach to food - they are suction feeders and consume tiny crustaceans, of which there are many in trenches. Not having a swim bladder, the gas-filled organ to control buoyancy that is found in many other fish, is an additional advantage. Their gelatinous bodies help them survive. There are over 300 species, most of which are actually shallow-water creatures and can be found in river estuaries.īut the snailfish group have also adapted to life in the cold waters of the Arctic and Antarctic, and also under the extreme pressure conditions that exist in the world's deepest trenches.Īt 8km down, they are experiencing more than 80 megapascals, or 800 times the pressure at the ocean surface. These, again, were snailfish, Pseudoliparis belyaevi, and set a record for the deepest fish ever caught. Bait was added to the frame to attract sea life.Īlthough a specimen was not caught to fully identify its species type, several fish were trapped slightly higher up in the water column in the nearby Japan Trench at a depth of 8022m. The juvenile Pseudoliparis was filmed by a camera system attached to a weighted frame released from over the side of a ship, the DSSV Pressure Drop. A decade of investigations around the globe has confirmed this. The University of Western Australia deep-sea scientist made a prediction 10 years ago that fish would likely be found as deep as 8200m to 8400m. "If this record is broken, it would only be by minute increments, potentially by just a few metres," Prof Alan Jamieson told BBC News. This discovery therefore beats the depth record by 158m. The previous deepest fish observation was made at 8178m, further south in the Pacific in the Mariana Trench. The lead scientist said the snailfish could be at, or very close to, the maximum depth any fish can survive. It was filmed by an autonomous "lander" dropped into the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, south of Japan. The species - a type of snailfish of the genus Pseudoliparis - was filmed swimming at 8336m. Scientists have filmed a fish swimming at an extraordinary depth in the ocean, making it the deepest observation of this nature that has ever been made. Photo: Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre "Prior to this, Solumbellula monocephalus had never been seen in the central Pacific and never collected," he said.Snailfish seen more than eight kilometres below the surface of the ocean. (Sea pens reach maturity at five or six years of age, and can live for more than a decade.) Based on the animal’s impressive size, Auscavitch surmised that it was rather old, however he can’t give a specific age. When I saw this amazing sea pen on video, I knew exactly what it could be."īut just to be sure, Auscavitch sought input from biologists on shore, who helped confirm his suspicions that it was a sea pen, a coral relative. The one we captured on video was massive, possibly the same size or larger than Hercules, our ROV. He added, "We were nearing the end of our cruise and were at the bottom of the seafloor when we observed the two. "From time to time, we come across something that we never expected to see, and those are often the most powerful observations," he told Live Science. Steve Auscavitch, the expedition’s lead researcher and a deep-sea biologist and post-doctoral scholar at Boston University, described the sighting as "fascinating." Related: 10 weird creatures found in the deep sea in 2021
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