Snailfish, which are part of the Liparidae family, typically have jelly-like bodies that appear covered in loose skin, a narrow tail, and large heads, according to a press release. Most of the snailfish species have a disk-like appendage on their stomach. This allows them to stick to larger animals — like deep-sea crabs — as a hitch-hiker, or cling to the sea floor. While about 62 miles off California’s coast, the MBARI Biodiversity and Biooptics Research Team, led by senior scientist Steven Haddock, was exploring the seafloor around the outer Monterey Canyon.

The Deep Sea Conservation Coalition uses science to help protect and preserve the deep sea.

The further we dive down from the surface, the less new food is available, making the fight to survive that much more challenging. Despite these harsh conditions, there is life—an astounding variety of creatures that will boggle your mind. You can’t dive to the deep ocean on your own, of course, but scientists have a variety of sophisticated technologies to explore this vast frontier. Abyssal plains cover over half the ocean floor, usually between depths of 3,000 to 6,000 meters. Potato-sized polymetallic nodules litter the surface of the abyssal plain, formed over millions of years from metals such as iron, copper, cobalt, manganese and nickel precipitate from seawater.

Technologies for Exploring the Deep

Until the late 19th century, many people considered the great depths of the ocean too harsh to support life. Starting in the early 1800’s European scientists began to probe the depths of the North Atlantic to see if they could find life in the deep-sea. Based on some initial sampling that suggested animals lived in the deep ocean, the H.M.S. Challenger was commissioned for an around the world expedition that lasted from 1872 to 1876.

THREE WAYS YOU ARE CONNECTED TO THE DEEP SEA

His mouth fuses with her skin and the bloodstreams of the two become connected. This is perhaps because locating each other is so difficult in the darkness. Deep sea angler fish lure prey within reach by dangling their long lures as bait, and some have been known to swallow prey larger than themselves. It is dark brown in colour, with light-emitting photophores along its belly except for a dark “collar” around its throat and gill slits.
Scientists are now endeavouring to sound out the remaining stocks of reef ocean perch (Sebastes marinus) and deep sea perch (Sebastes mentella) in the Baltic. The pressure on the resources of the ocean in the last few years has increased incredibly, so much so, that the six billion humans on the planet that demand an increasingly high amount of fish will probably fish the ocean empty. Over-subsidising the fisheries fleets use sonar sounding and satellite navigation for their big raid in the ocean. According to the FAO of the United Nations currently 60 % of the worldwide 200 most commonly used fish species are either overfished or fished to capacity.
Off the coast of New Zealand vast amounts of fish were caught, too, approximately 41,000 tons in 1990, and Deep Sea another 34,000 tons off of Tasmania. Bacteria at hydrothermal vents often live in symbiosis with other organisms. It takes all its nutrients exclucively from the sulphur bacteria that live within its body – the worm doesn’t even have a mouth or digestive organs.
With features unlike other deep-sea snailfishes that MBARI had encountered offshore of California, Haddock reached out to Gerringer for more detailed analysis. MBARI frequently collaborates with expert taxonomists to review footage and specimens. These partnerships offer fresh perspectives that often spark new discoveries. Seamounts are underwater mountains that rise from the seabed without breaking the surface.

Seamounts and Canyons

• Further, technological developments such as the GPS or improved ocean mapping has brought even the most remote deep sea regions within reach of the fishing nations.
• As such, there have only been pilot projects; there is no commercial mining network.
• It remains to be seen whether the exploration of the deep sea can also aid the protection and conservation of this fascinating habitat.
• The crossover between the continental shelf region and the deep sea is called the archibenthal.
• But in fact, producing light in the deep is the norm rather than the exception.

Here huge swarms of crabs and another 22 endemic species can be observed. The majority of deep sea fish are ‘non quota’ fish, which means that the quantities caught outside of the exclusive economic zone (EEC, 200 miles) are not identified and thus not recorded correctly. Without correct data regarding their quotas the regulation of stocks is becoming increasingly difficult as well as leading to errors in setting total allowable catch (TAC) values. Scottish biologists are therefore distributing identification keys to fishermen, to improve their estimates of landed deep sea fish a little. Halibut, blue ling, and ocean perch are the most well-known deep sea fish on the market these days. Hundreds of years ago the ocean perch was not a consumption fish, however – large catches were thrown overboard.

• But unlike most life on earth that uses light from the sun as a source of energy, these bacteria produce energy through a chemical reaction that uses minerals from the vents.
• The biotic communities differ according to the water depth, and their occurrence chiefly depends on the available nutrients.
• Microbes near cold seeps gain energy through chemical reactions, and then pass the energy to symbiotic partners like tubeworms, clams, or mussels.
• The fishes belong to the family Liparidae, or snailfishes, which have evolved to be incredibly successful in deep-sea habitats.
• Many animals that live in this largest of the earth’s habitats are very bizarre and dramatically different from their closest relatives.
• The little nutrition that rains down from above in the form of marine snow is not nearly consistent enough nor substantive enough to fuel a large living creature (though there are billions of tiny ones).

Ghostshark is one of the common names for chimaeras, but they aren’t actually sharks at all. Their closest living relatives are sharks, but they branched off from the evolutionary line about 400 million years ago and are among the most primitive fish. Like sharks, the chimaera skeleton is made from cartilage, and they lay eggs in leathery cases and use electroreception to find prey. However, they differ from sharks in having a hidden gills covered by an operculum or gill cover, and non-replaceable rodent-like tooth plates. Chimaeras even have a venomous dorsal spine for protection from predation. Our specimen was collected at depths between 600–1,000m from the Eastern North Atlantic, in an area known as King’s Trough Flank.
The walls, ledges, and bottoms of canyons create a diverse variety of habitats—many of which are steep, and scoured by currents rich in tiny food particles—that enable an array of sea creatures to live there. The rocky ledges are a perfect place for deep sea corals to attach, and the muddy bottom is a soft home for worms and mollusks to burrow. Fish, too, find shelter within the canyon walls, and also a good place to catch a meal. It is a cold and dark place that lies between 3,000 and 6,000 meters below the sea surface. It is also home to squat lobsters, red prawns, and various species of sea cucumbers.

Adaptation to hydrostatic pressure

Since then, each exploration brings new proof of extraordinary diversity of life in the ocean and the capacity of species to live in exceptional conditions (temperature, oxygenation, acidity, pressure, etc.). The question is whether or not this adaptation capacity will resist to climate change-induced disruptions. However, it is important to acknowledge that for now there is very limited visibility of the destabilization these ecosystems suffer due to disturbances predicted by the greenhouse gas emission scenarios. The protection of oceanic regions is currently only taking place within the sovereignty power of the nations, within the EEZ.
The tubeworms, too, require symbiotic bacteria for the metabolism and thus live very close to the methane source. The European deep sea transect (EDT), a region of important research areas in the North-eastern Atlantic Ocean, should be protected from anthropogenic input. The most noticeable thing about the fangtooth fish is its mouth full of needle sharp teeth, including its huge front fangs.