A lone fish was captured by an underwater camera at 8,336 meters deepthe sighting of this type of animals deepest to dateAustralian academic sources reported Monday.

The fish, a juvenile specimen of a type of snail fish called Pseudoliparis belyaeviwas filmed in the underwater trench Izu-Ogasawaraabout 1,000 kilometers south of Tokyo, according to the statement from the University of Western Australia (UWA).

The Pseudoliparis, which measures about eleven centimeters long, had been seen in 2017 at a depth of 8,178 meters in the Mariana Trench, in the western part of the Pacific Ocean and which is considered the deepest on the planet.

“The maximum depth at which they can survive is really amazing“Alan Jamieson, chief scientist of the expedition and UWA academic, who has been researching this species for more than 15 years, points out in the statement.

The scientists from the Australian university, who participated in a two-month investigation at the end of 2022 together with their colleagues from the University of Tokyoalso caught two specimens of Pseudoliparis belyaevi at 8,022 meters, the first fish collected at these depths.

“In other areas, such as in the Mariana Trench, we found (the fish) in smaller and smaller numbers as we passed the 8,000 meter depth mark. But in Japan they are much more abundant“, the scientist remarked.

One of the characteristics of Pseudoliparis is that the juvenile specimens tend to live deeper than adultssomething that is not usual in most of the fish that live in the deepest parts of the oceans, according to the statement.