Off the coast of Japan, scientists from Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and the University of Western Australia have filmed the deepest fish ever seen on the sea floor. The snailfish was swimming at 8 336 meters below sea level.
With our correspondent in Tokyo, Frederic Charles
The snailfish was discovered off the coast of Japan in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, one of the deepest on the planet. Scientists estimate that this new record for observing a fish at such a depth will not be beaten, or by very little, because the fish was swimming at an extreme depth, at the maximum limit in which its aquatic vertebrae which developed gelatinous bodies without swim bladders can live.
According the scientists, the greater depths will probably not harbor any fish, but living micro-organisms. Some species of this snailfish of the genus pseudoliparis – there are more than 300 of them – have become accustomed to living in extreme depths, where the pressure of the water column is 800 times higher than on land.
The study of snailfish
To observe the animal, the researchers lowered cameras weighted with a frame and projectors from the side of a ship. The fish were attracted to the light from the cameras using shellfish bait. Due to lack of visibility, the researchers were unable to identify the species accurate small Japanese fish. At a shallower depth, they managed to bring other snailfish to the surface to study them.
Prior to this snailfish, the previous record for the deepest sighting of a fish was photographed in 2018 at a depth of 8,178 meters in the Mariana Islands Trench, near the island of Guam.
#FishADay Pseudoliparis sp. A new depth record for the genus (juvenile of an unidentified species) has just been announced!! 8,336 m deep in the Izu-Ogasawara trench southwest of Japan. Only five mountains in the world are taller than that is deep. https://t.co/hPSCmccwcD
— Dr. Hannah Owens (@HannahOish) April 3, 2023
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