LOWEST OF THE LOW

Scientists Find Weird Fish at Deepest Depth Ever Recorded

The snailfish was seen swimming over five miles below the surface.

Scientists found a fish swimming at the deepest depth ever recorded during a study of marine life in underwater trenches off Japan. A camera sent down into the Izu-Ogasawara trench south of Japan filmed a snailfish 27,350 feet—over five miles—beneath the waves. Researchers were then able to catch two snailfish in traps set 26,320 feet down. No one had ever so much as seen a fish in the Izu-Ogasawara trench before, and the initial sighting is believed to have broken the previous deepest fish sighting record by over 500 feet. “We have spent over 15 years researching these deep snailfish,” Alan Jamieson, head of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said in a statement. “There is so much more to them than simply the depth, but the maximum depth they can survive is truly astonishing.”