Dont Underestimate Its Shape, Because This Fish Is The Deepest Inhabitant Of The Sea

Not all marine creatures can live in the deep ocean. Certain adaptations must be had to live in such an extreme environment. One fish that has the ability to survive in the deep sea is Pseudoliparis swirei or Mariana snailfish, a newly discovered species.

This fish is slightly longer than the hand of an adult human. His skin was translucent and scaly, making the pink inner organ visible. This snailfish lives in the manger of Mariana, east of the Philippines, with a depth of 8,000 meters below sea level. At that depth, the water pressure is 800 times greater than the sea level.

Large pressures trigger changes in chemical reactions such as protein formation. This determines the limits of how deep the fish can survive. Then, the temperature of the sea water is just slightly above freezing. This makes P. swirei the deepest fish ever found by humans. "They do not look very healthy or strong to live in such extreme environments, but they manage to do it," Mackenzie Gerringer of the University of Washington was quoted as saying by Science Alert on Thursday (30/11/2017).

Snailfish commonly found in the deep sea. They live by sucking shrimp and other crustaceans. Previously, researchers had found Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis that live on 7,700 meters (25,300 feet) in the Japanese trough. Now with the discovery of Swirei P, insights about deepwater diversity are increasing. To find P swirei, researchers used 37 snailfish specimens from 2014 and 2017 using a feeding device between 6,898 to 7,966 meters (22,630 to 26,135 feet).

Newcastle University environmental scientist Thomas Linley says the snailfish has adapted to go deeper than other fish. This option turned out to bring benefits to P. swirei. "Here they are free of predators, and the shape of the trough funnel means there's more food," Linley said. Based on DNA analysis and anatomical observations, P. swirei is a new species. The researchers used a CT scan to map the inside of the body. The analysis of P. swirei has been published in Zootaxa journal on Tuesday (11/28/2017).