Scientists announced that the fish was caught by scientists swimming at never-before-recorded depths of greater than five miles below the ocean’s surface off the coast of Japan.
An unknown species of snail was captured on camera floating 27,350 feet underwater by a deep-sea vessel in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, southeast of Japan, Guardian reported.
Scientists from the Minderoo-University of Western Australia’s Deep Sea Research Center and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology spotted the alien-like creature – belonging to the genus Pseudoliparis – during a two-month expedition that began last yr.
Just a few days after filming the latest snail, the researchers caught two other snails of the species Pseudoliparis belyaevi in a ditch at 26,318 feet. Scientists told The Guardian these fish are the first ever to be collected from a depth of greater than 8,000 meters – or 26,246 feet.
A research team has been exploring trenches off the coast of Japan with an unmanned bait craft often known as a lander as a part of a 10-year study of the world’s deepest fish populations.
There are over 400 known species of snails which are found at just about all sea depths.
Based on Professor Alan Jamieson, the expedition’s chief scientist and founding father of the Minderoo-UWA Center for Deep Sea Research, the species found near the ocean floor have adapted over eons to survive greater than 1,000 meters deeper than the next known deep-sea fish.
“If you imagine what the world’s deepest fish should appear like, chances are high it’s gnarled, black, with big teeth and small eyes,” Jamieson told The Guardian. “Chances are high it has nothing to do with the deep sea – it has to do with being dark.”
Nonetheless, he said the obvious physical adaptations are less at extreme depths.
“One in every of the reasons [snailfish] they’re so effective that they have no swim bladders,” he continued. “Trying to take care of a gas cavity may be very difficult at high pressure.”
At 8,000 meters below the surface, the pressure is 800 times greater than at the surface of the ocean.
The pinkish, almost winged creatures lack scales like most fish, but have a gelatinous layer around their body that Jamieson called “a physiologically inexpensive adaptation.”
Unlike other fish species, the youngest snails are frequently found at greater depths.
“Since there’s nothing else besides them, the shallow end of the band overlaps with a gaggle of other deep-sea fish, so putting juveniles at that end probably means they’ll be eaten,” Jamieson told the paper. “If you go to mega deep depths, over 8,000 [metres]lots of them are very, very small.”
The brand new discovery breaks the previous record for the deepest fish ever discovered by 158 meters or about 518 feet. Jamieson also made this discovery in 2017 – a Mariana snail in the Mariana Trench.
