Fishermen reel in ‘deepest sea creature ever caught’ in trap 8km underwater

Posted on : 04/07/2023
Fishermen reel in ‘deepest sea creature ever caught’ in trap 8km underwater
Science 

A fisherman made history by reeling in the “deepest sea creature ever caught”.

The angler captured a juvenile snailfish in a trap a little over 8,000 meters belove the surface.

According to the University of Western Australia, it was one of two collected from the trap in the Japan Trench.

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Last September, scientists embarked on a two-month expedition on the research ship DSSV Pressure Drop.

Scientists from the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre and the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology explored the Japan, Izu-Ogasawara and Ryukyu trenches in the Pacific Ocean as part of a study of deep-sea fish populations.

The Daily Mail reported that a snailfish was captured on film by one of the baited cameras.

At 8,336 meters in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, it is believed to be the deepest ever recorded.

UWA professor Alan Jamieson said the abundance of life at the ocean's depths was remarkable.

He said: “The Japanese trenches were incredible places to explore. They are so rich in life, even all the way to the bottom.

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“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.

“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 professor added that before this expedition, no one had ever seen, never mind collected a single fish from this trench.

The individual snailfish, claimed as the deepest ever found, was an 'extremely small' juvenile which tended to live in the deepest end of its range.

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