Its skeleton, meanwhile, is soft and flexible to allow it to tolerate the extreme pressure, while it is covered in a gelatinous layer rather than scales. Its stomach, for instance, takes up much more space than in other snailfishes, which is thought to allow it to eat a lot when it comes across scarce prey on the ocean floor. This has revealed how these animals adapted to life in a place where the pressure is 1,000 times greater than at sea level. The deepest living snailfishes are found in the genus Pseudoliparis, and were among the first deep sea fishes to have their genome sequenced. They are one of the fastest radiating groups of fishes, and can be found in marine habitats all the way from rockpools down to some of the deepest parts of the ocean.' Snailfishes are a family of fish that have been successful in exploiting inhospitable habitats such as cold and deep water, allowing them to rapidly evolve into a multitude of species.ĭr Rupert Collins, Senior Curator in Charge of Fishes at the Museum, says, 'There are over 400 species of snailfishes, and there are likely to be more which haven't yet been described. The recording makes a strong case for Pseudoliparis being the deepest-ever fish. Though another fish has been reported from greater depths, the reliability of this record has been questioned. 'In other trenches such as the Mariana Trench, we were finding them at increasingly deeper depths just creeping over that 8,000-metre mark in fewer and fewer numbers, but around Japan they are really quite abundant.' Professor Alan Jamieson, the chief scientist of the expedition, says, '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.' This is 158 metres deeper than a previous recording made by the team in 2017, and close to the depth limit for all fish. Japanese and Australian researchers filmed a Pseudoliparis snailfish at 8,336 metres down as part of an expedition to some of the world's deepest ocean trenches. A fish found off the coast of Japan could be the deepest ever recorded.
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