Marine scientists have caught - on camera - a rare species of the snailfish at great depths of the Pacific Ocean, making it the deepest observation of this nature ever, according to NBC News. The footage was captured at a depth of 27,349 feet (8,336 metres) at the bottom of a deep-sea trench using an autonomous vehicle that used little light. Identified as a snailfish of the genus Pseudoliparis, the fish resembles a ghoulishly large tadpole, the outlet further said in its report.
The discovery is significant because the vessel was operating at a pressure of 80 megapascals, or 800 times the pressure at the ocean surface.
The fish was found in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench south of Japan during a two-month voyage by a joint Australian-Japanese scientific expedition.
It was part of a decade-long study into the deepest fish population being carried out by University of Western Australia (UWA) and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.
"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," NBC News quoted Alan Jamieson, the director of the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre, as saying in a statement.
The BBC said that previous deepest living fish was found at a depth of 8,178 metres in the Mariana Trench.
There are over 300 species of the snailfish, and most of them are shallow waters creatures found in river estuaries, the outlet further said.
It is astonishing that the fish survived at such great depths, a feat marine scientists attribute to its gelatinous bodies.
Snailfish are suction feeders, consuming tiny crustaceans in trenches, said the BBC.
