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The
expedition's chief scientist, Professor Alan Jamieson, said on
Monday that two snailfish were caught in traps set 8,022 metres
underwater in the Japan Trench, south of Japan, during a
two-month voyage by a team from the University of Western
Australia (UWA) and the Tokyo University of Marine Science.
The snailfish, of the Pseudoliparis belyaevi species, are the
first to be caught below 8,000 metres, the expedition said. It
wasn't immediately clear how big the fish were, but the species
has been recorded as reaching a length of close to 11
centimetres (4.3 inches).
Remotely operated cameras lowered from the DSSV Pressure Drop by
the joint expedition, part of a 10-year study into the deepest
fish population on the planet, also recorded an unknown
snailfish species swimming 8,336 metres deep in the
Izu-Ogasawara Trench off southern Japan.
"The Japanese trenches were incredible places to explore; they
are so rich in life, even all the way at the bottom," said
Jamieson, founder of the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre.
"We tell people from the very early ages, as young as two or
three, that the deep sea is a horrible scary place that you
shouldn't go and that grows with you with time," said Jamieson.
"We don't appreciate the fact that it (the deep sea) is
fundamentally most of planet Earth and resources should be put
into understanding and how to work out how we are affecting it
and how it works."
(Reporting by Cordelia Hsu; Writing by Lewis Jackson; Editing by
Kenneth Maxwell)
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