Marine biologists have gotten the first footage ever of a school of fish living 4.8 miles beneath the ocean's surface in the cold, pitch black, and fiercely pressurized habitat of the Pacific's Japan Trench. A video shows the pale white hadal snailfish, officially known as Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, happily wriggling around on the seabed, despite water pressure that the researchers say is equivalent to 1,600 elephants standing on the roof of a Mini.
The fish belong to a species previously known only from five pickled specimens trawled up by Russian scientists in the 1950s, said [researcher] Monty Priede [National Geographic News].
Priede's team of British and Japanese researchers found the rare snailfish during their exploration of deep, narrow marine trenches in Pacific Ocean, and say it was the deepest ever sighting of live fish. The biologists are investigating the mechanics of how marine life exists at such extreme depths. Says Priede:
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