How Deep Can a Fish Go? Scientists May Have Answer

Created: 03/05/2014 5:56 AM By: Jennie Olson

Cape Rodney-Okakari Point, Goat Island Marine Reserve
Cape Rodney-Okakari Point, Goat Island Marine Reserve
Photo: Photo: Wikimedia Commons

By measuring levels of a compound in the fish that helps offset the effects of pressure, the scientists say they've concluded that fish likely can't survive below about 8,200 meters (5.1 miles). That would mean no fish at all live in the deepest one-quarter of the world's oceans.
New Zealand marine ecologist Ashley Rowden, a co-author of the paper, said nobody had caught a snailfish in nearly 60 years and so he wasn't overly hopeful when they sent down a box-like trap into the Kermadec Trench near New Zealand in late 2011.
"When it came up, it was just amazing to see. It was 'Oh my God, we've got the fish, and we've got more than one,'" Rowden said.
"It was like a water-filled condom," he said. "A sloppy, gelatinous mass that moves between your hands. It was very cool, and very strange to see its organs and everything."
Rowden, who works at New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, said scientists had previously speculated fish couldn't live below certain depths but that catching the fish and studying them helped provide more scientific certainty.
Meanwhile, he said, if the hadal snailfish look strange enough, they would smell terrible when they decompose. That, he said, is because the molecule has another property - it gives fish their distinctive smell, so the deeper they live, the stronger they stink.
Yancey is keeping his snailfish on ice.
