Scientists from a Scottish university have discovered a previously unknown species of fish in one of the deepest points in the world's oceans.
The party from Aberdeen University have returned from seven days of ocean sampling to the north of New Zealand, near the Kermadec Islands at depths of between half-a-mile and four miles. They took more than 6500 photographs of deep-sea fish and caught about 100 fish.
They discovered a species of eelpout, an eel-like fish, a member of the ray-finned fish family, more than two-and-a-half miles down.
They also established new depth records of nearly three-and-a-half miles for a rattail fish, which has not previously been caught in the south-west Pacific; and depth records of more than two miles for large cusk eels.
The expedition involved scientists from the university's sub-sea research centre, Oceanlab, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. They used landers with cameras that free-fall to the seafloor, as well as baited fish traps.
Voyage leader Dr Alan Jamieson, from Oceanlab, said: "What makes the whole experience even more personally satisfying is that all the equipment used in these research cruises was designed and constructed at Oceanlab."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article