Scientists from The University of Western Australia and Japan set a world record after they filmed a fish swimming 8,336 metre below sea level in Japan. This marks the deepest ever observation of a fish, beating the previous record set at 8,178 metre in Mariana Trench. According to the BBC, scientists filmed the world’s deepest fish, a snailfish, by dropping an autonomous “lander” camera into the Izu-Ogasawara Trench near Japan. They believe is “very close to” the maximum depth at which any fish can live.
“If this record is broken, it would only be by minute increments, potentially by just a few metres,” Professor Alan Jamieson, a University of Western Australia deep-sea scientist, told the outlet.
According to the BBC, the snailfish was a young member of the Pseudoliparis species, but scientists were unable to obtain a specimen to completely identify the species. Instead, the researchers captured several Pseudoliparis belyaevi fish a little higher up in the ocean at 8,022 meters, breaking the previous record for the deepest fish ever caught.
Watch: The world’s deepest fish
The Mariana snailfish, which had been known to scientists since 2014, was revealed to be the prior deepest fish ever found. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, snailfish are found in the hadal zone, the lowest region of the ocean, where no light can reach depths of 6,000 to 11,000 meters.
Jamieson speculated that the fish were able to survive greater depths than those found in the Mariana Trench due to the Izu-Ogasawara’s slightly warmer waters.
“We predicted the deepest fish would be there and we predicted it would be a snailfish,” Jamieson said according to the outlet. “I get frustrated when people tell me we know nothing about the deep sea. We do. Things are changing really fast.”
