World's deepest fish found by scientists near Japan

Researchers have video of a fish swimming more than 8 kilometers underwater, breaking the previous record for the deepest fish ever found.

The footage was taken from an autonomous deep ocean vessel as part of a two-month expedition that started last year. A few days after the snailfish was filmed, scientists caught two other snailfish of the species Pseudoliparis belyaevi in the Japan trench from a depth of 8,022 meters.

These fish, according to the team, are the first to ever have been retrieved from a depth of more than 8,000 meters.
As part of a ten-year investigation into the world's deepest fish populations, researchers from the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology and the Minderoo-University of Western Australia Deep Sea Research Centre set out to explore the Japan, Izu-Ogasawara, and Ryukyu trenches, which are each located at a depth of 7,300, 9,300, and 8,000 meters, respectively.

As part of a 10-year investigation into the world's deepest fish population, remote-controlled cameras lowered from the DSSV Pressure Drop by the joint expedition captured footage of an unidentified species of snailfish swimming 8,336 meters beneath the surface off the coast of southern Japan.

The Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre's founder, Jamieson, remarked that the Japanese trenches were amazing to investigate since they are so abundant in life.

"We tell people that the deep sea is a terrible, terrifying place that you shouldn't go and that grows with you with time," said Jamieson. "We tell people that from very early ages, as young as two or three."

"We fail to recognize that the deep water constitutes the majority of planet Earth in its most basic form, and that resources should be invested in learning about it in order to determine how our actions affect it and how it functions".