Scientists have a new record-holder for the deepest-swimming fish ever filmed after capturing a fish they have never seen before on camera at a depth of approximately 26,700 feet (8,145 meters) beneath the ocean’s surface in the Mariana Trench.
Alan Jamieson, a deep-sea researcher at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, told the BBC, “We think it is a snailfish, but it’s so weird-looking; it’s up in the air in terms of what it is.”
The researchers saw it in the Mariana Trench “at more than 8,000 meters,” Jamieson added, “and we think it’s a new species.”
Before discovering this new fish, the previous record-holder for the deepest-swimming fish was a gelatinous snailfish from Japan, which had been recorded at a depth of about 25,000 feet.
Around the 1:45 mark of the video below, you will see the new record-holder swimming around what appears to be 1:45 mark shrimp-like amphipods, at a depth much deeper than the Japanese snailfish.
The researchers are still gathering information on the new deep-sea dwelling creature because they were not able to capture it. However, Jamieson told the BBC, “It is unbelievably fragile, and when it swims, it looks like it has wet tissue paper floating behind it. And it has a weird snout — it looks like a cartoon dog snout.”
