Scientists in Japan and Australia have recorded footage of a fish swimming 8,336 meters underwater, making it the deepest fish ever filmed.
The unknown species of snailfish was filmed in the Izu-Ogasawara trench located southeast of Japan, according to The Guardian.
Meet the world’s deepest fish 👋
The Pseudoliparis snailfish was pictured swimming at a depth of 8,336 metres (27,349 ft) off the coast of Japan 🐟 pic.twitter.com/KyJnbLBQ8Q
— Guinness World Records (@GWR) April 4, 2023
It was discovered as part of a joint expedition by scientists from the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology. The researchers used unmanned submersibles known as landers to explore the trench, The Guardian reported.
The chief scientist of the expedition and founder of the Deep Sea Research Centre Professor Alan Jamieson told The Guardian that some snailfish species have specific adaptations that allow them to live 1,000 meters deeper than other fish.
“When you picture what the deepest fish in the world should look like, the chances are it’s gnarly, black, with big teeth and small eyes,” Jamieson told the outlet. “Chances are it’s got nothing to do with deep sea – that has to do with being dark.”
The record-breaking discovery trumps the 2017 record, also filmed by Jamieson, of a fish found 8,178 meters deep in the Marianas Trench. (RELATED: American Diver Smashes Record For Deepest Ocean Sub Dive)
The discovered fish was a juvenile, as is typically the case for snailfish found at that depth, Jamieson explained to The Guardian. “Because there’s nothing else beyond them, the shallow end of the range overlaps with a bunch of other deep-sea fish, so putting juveniles at that end probably means they’ll get eaten,” he said. “When you get down to the mega deep depths, 8,000 plus [metres], a lot of them are very, very small.”
Jamieson once hypothesized that it would be biologically impossible for fish to live deeper than 8,200 to 8,400 meters.
“After all these years of hammering away at this [theory], it seems to be pretty solid. We’ve done close to 250 deployments … the window is narrowed to the point where on this Japanese expedition, we were seeing snailfish every single deployment down to this last one [of 8,336 metres],” Jamieson told The Guardian.