![]() Onboard scientists spotted the creature using the ROV SuBastian, which spent a total of 182 hours scanning the seafloor during the expedition. The translucent cephalopod was originally discovered during a 34-day expedition of the Central Pacific Ocean onboard the SOI's research vessel Falkor. (Image credit: Schmidt Ocean Institute) (opens in new tab)Īlso in August, researchers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) released footage of an elusive glass octopus ( Vitreledonella richardi) off the coast of the remote Phoenix Islands, an archipelago located more than 3,200 miles (5,100 km) northeast of Sydney, Australia. It would not look out of place at the local fish market.A glass octopus ( Vitreledonella richardi) was spotted by researchers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute in the deep sea of the Central Pacific Ocean. The can be up to a foot long, strikingly red in color, and swim and behave in exactly the way one would expect a prawn to swim and behave in our coastal regions. Similarly, if we look at the deepest of the big crustaceans, which happen to be penaeid prawns (Benthesicymus), there is nothing all that unfamiliar about them. They are in fact small, translucent pink, quirky little fish that swim like tadpoles and would not look out of place in a sunlit lagoon. We found the deepest of all in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench at 8,336m, but this fish does not conform to any preconceived visual impression of what the deepest dweller should look like. This family of fish has adapted to an array of different environmental settings and habitats, including the deepest. There are more than 400 species of snailfish, and most are found in shallow waters, or even estuaries in some cases. They are snailfish in the family of ray-finned fishes called Liparidae. The deepest fish in the world isn't really a deep-sea fish. If we take, for example, the deepest fish, the deepest prawn, the deepest jellyfish, the deepest anemone and the deepest octopus, we find them at depths of 8,336m, 7,703m, 10,000m, 10,900m and 7,000m, respectively (between 4.3 and 6.8 miles deep). Adaptations to depth, or rather high pressure, are not usually things we can see, but rather changes at the level of cells or body tissues, to enable life at depth. The black body, big eyes, bioluminescent lures and unfamiliar fins and textures are all adaptations to stealthy but efficient living in low-light conditions.Īt deeper levels, where low-light adaptations are no longer required (because there's a total absence of light), marine life takes on different, less dramatic forms. ![]() Many of these classically spooky monsters are actually very small and are simply enlarged in our imagination, in the absence of any sense of physical scale. Hatchet fish, fangtooth, lanternfish, dragonfish, viperfish and angler fish inhabit the mid-waters of the twilight zone (less than 1,000m deep). While these sorts of visually striking creatures do exist, they are often not that deep, or that big. Researchers near Japan capture footage of deepest fish ever recorded underwater. It would be more the stuff of nightmares. It would be nothing like the shallow-water fish we eat, keep as pets, or pay to see in aquariums. ![]() If you ask someone what the deepest fish in the world looks like, they will probably conjure up an image of a scaly, black, stealthy creature with bioluminescent lures, large fangs, spiny fins and demonic eyes lurking in the depths waiting to strike at unsuspecting victims. Then, at a staggering 8,336m, a rather unassuming little juvenile slowly swam past the camera, oblivious to the fact it had just become the deepest fish on record. We found what is likely a new species of fish in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench and filmed it many times at depths between 6,500 and 8,000 meters. Having already found the Mariana snailfish in 2014-thought to be the deepest ever-we had a hunch that with more exploration and a better understanding of things like temperature, the Japanese trenches would host a fish at even greater depths.Īfter another 63 deployments of our deep-sea cameras, bringing our total to about 250 across the globe, we hit the jackpot. Last year, my colleagues and I went on an expedition to the deep trenches around Japan.
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