A Ghostly New Species: The snailfish

This new species of snailfish was discovered 7 kilometres down in the Peru-Chile trench in the south-east Pacific Ocean using a deep-sea baited camera system.

A team of marine biologists from the Hadal Environment and Educational Program (HADEEP) - a collaborative research project between Oceanlab at the University of Aberdeen, UK, and the Ocean Research Institute at the University of Tokyo, Japan, with support from New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric research institute (NIWA) - captured 6000 images at depths between 4.5 and 8 kilometres in the trench over a three-week expedition.

As well as the reclusive, skulking fish, the team also found large groups of cusk-eels and crustacean scavengers called amphipods at these depths for the first time.