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A new world record for the world’s deepest fish to be observed underwater has been set after a snailfish was filmed at 8,336m in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench by scientists from the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, Japan.
The fish was spotted, and captured, during a deep-sea expedition to the Japan, Izu-Ogasawara and Ryukyu oceanic trenches onboard the research vessel DSSV Pressure Drop during August and September 2022, part of a 10-year mission to study deep sea fish populations.
The record was set during a dive in the 9,780m-deep Izu-Ogasawara trench, when an unknown species of snailfish from the genus Pseudiliparis was filmed by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV).
Two days later, while exploring the 8,046m-deep Japan trench, two snailfish of the species Pseudoliparis belyaevi were collected for study in baited traps.
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Snailfish have tadpole-shaped bodies ranging from 5-80cm in length, and do not have scales, but, rather, a gelatinous skin. There are currently 410 known species of snailfishes from 30 different genera, although there are thought to be many more that have yet to be identified.
Snailfish are distributed circumglobally but are cold water-specific creatures, so while they are found in shallow waters closer to the poles, they exist only in the cooler waters of the deep sea closer to the tropics. As a result, they have a greater depth range than any other known family of fish.
Previous sightings of deep-sea snailfish have been recorded as deep as 8,178m in the Mariana Trench, although the species sighted at the time was never described. The previous record holder for the deepest-living described species – Pseudoliparis swirei – was also seen in the Mariana Trench.
‘We have spent over 15 years researching these deep snailfish; there is so much more to them than simply the depth, but the maximum depth they can survive is truly astonishing,’ said expedition leader and founder of the University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre, Professor Alan Jamieson.
‘In other trenches such as the Mariana Trench, we were finding them at increasingly deeper depths just creeping over that 8,000m mark in fewer and fewer numbers, but around Japan they are really quite abundant.
‘The Japanese trenches were incredible places to explore,’ added Jamieson, ‘they are so rich in life, even all the way at the bottom,” Professor Jamieson said.
The mission was supported by Victor Vescovo, holder of the world record for the deepest depth recorded by a human, when he piloted his submersible Limiting Factor to the bottom of Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench in 2019.
Vescovo was also thought to have discovered a previously unknown species of hadal snailfish during a dive to the bottom of the Sunda Trench, south of Bali.
Crowley (known to his mum as Mark), packed in his IT job in 2005 and spent the next nine years working as a full-time scuba diving professional. He started writing for DIVE in 2010 and hasn't stopped since.
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Snailfish breaks world record for deepest fish - DIVE Magazine
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