When thinking of animals that live in the most extreme environments on Earth most of us probably don’t think of the snailfish. Its name may not hint at extraordinary physical capabilities but the snailfish has broken the record for living at the deepest ocean depths known to humanity.
In fact scientists believed it was physiologically impossible for fish to survive conditions below 8,200 metres. Until recently, when Australian and Japanese researchers found one at a record-shattering 8,336 metres in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, south of Japan. That’s 158 metres deeper than the previous record, also set by a snailfish during an encounter in 2017 in the Marianas Trench, about 2,000km east of the Philippines.
