@RoscoPeeholePain:
This maybe?
"...are not my friends."

MrTaco

I dont believe this!! ¬_¬

How do we know this was not filmed at gizmodo HQ bath tube?
video proof of the cam traveling 7700mts to the deepsea in real time or it didnt happen!

EL_RIEL

ohh... this made me miss my sea monkeys!

josecardozo

So why the sound then? Does 4.7 miles down sound the same as 6 miles up in an airplane?

gizmodohomepage

@willie333:
yeah they can.. but only with 13 elephants on top of the aquarium

zender_ady

they look like sperm

thedarkhorse

"the equivalent to that of 1600 elephants standing on the roof of a Mini car"

bosskev

What the hell are they gathering around?

("hell" specifically, since at that depth, I'm going with "it's the gate to.")

92BuickLeSabre

Based on evolution it these kinds of fish are a dime a dozen in comparison to what humans have become. If we have all evolved from aquatic life forms to the lung breathing and window licking heathans that we are then how can one no believe there would be such abundance of life on the sea floor 4 miles down after billions of years?

basicvisual

After looking at the video, I would have to conclude that the snailfish aren't the only fish at that depth. There are some pretty normal looking fish and shrimp in that video too. I want to know what they look like when you get them into our atmosphere. Do they like bloat up or something? Can they live in an aquarium at say Sea World?

willie333

@TheAdAgency: When you get down to it, it's the only way that really makes sense.

Wait till their next submersible implodes like a tin can becuase they used african elephant instead of indian elephant pressures. Then we'll see controversy.

m4ximusprim3

@kosikutioner: I think since they are born in the environment their pressure is equalized inside and out. All air in their bodies are at that extremely high pressure and all the pressure outside counteracts so they are in equilibrium.

Think about the human body also, right now you have roughly 14.7 psi (gage) pressure pressing down on you. Yet you feel fine since you are in equilibrium. If you went into the water you would be crushed. If you went into space you would explode.

I kinda formulated everything without being an expert so I might be wrong. However, it seems plausible that if everything is capable of surviving the 14.7psig here on earth, that things could survive the pressures down there assuming they are at equilibrium.

phoenix27

Oh, that's not gross at all! I was hoping for a Cloverfield or something. You know, a real freak.

supercollider

@OMG! Ponies!:

link is broken : \

nutbastard

@phoenix27: If those are sperm, imagine the size of the animal it came from.

ripfire

Proof read please.

peacefulpony

I'd hate to have those under my skin :(

Spyder01

This post is full of grammatical errors... but those fish are sweet. Remind me a lot of tadpoles. They're almost mesmerizing to watch

cardboredbox

@Elasticity: Sperm / Hugeass tadpoles lol

phoenix27

oohhhh the mysterious-deep-sea-splooge fish....

kelseymonster

They look like sperm.

frigg

Yeah well they don't like you either!

Dinotech

No, Jesus. These are the second most-disgusting fish in the world.

The title of most-disgusting fish belongs to the hagfish, also known as the slime eel.

+ Watch video

OMG! Ponies!

It just boggles the mind trying to imagine how anything could possibly adapt to living and thriving in such a hostile environment.

Phenostar

Ah yes, I always state pressure in the ISO approved Elephantidae:Cooper format.

TheAdAgency

ya know what they look like right?
sperm.
there, i said it.

Elasticity

whoa

NervousFireStarter

"Any fish that teeth to do this"

am i missing something?

RoscoPeeholePain

Soo... how do the fishes survive down there? Special bones or something? I'd be more interested to hear that explained than the camera thing. Not to sound like a jerk or somethin... just sayin.

kosikutioner

umm.. there goes my lunch.

os_2

i guess the picture of the dead fish is supposed to be the nausea

stryker1800

@PlayerX: Wow! I suppose there are species that value quality over quantity.

ripfire

@ripfire: There's a kind of fruit fly (Dosphila Bifurca) that has SINGLE sperm cells that measure 5.8cm in length. Its testicles make up 11% of its dry body mass.

Even Chuck Norris blushes when he reads about Drosphila Bifurca.

PlayerX

I think the development of a mic that has dynamic range and can withstand the pressure is pretty amazing also.

DeadWriter

@92BuickLeSabre: They are eating the remains of one other species of fish that was in the same neighborhood. Pressure makes you very competitive.

Monty

I was going to say that had a face only a mother could love, but at that depth, mom cant see them either.

Curves

Is there a scale for this video?
Those are some pretty bigass shrimp.

zmjjmz

Mmmm... tastes like chicken.

daveedo

@kosikutioner: the pressure doesnt really matter sense they are filled with the water that they are surrounded by... aka no lungs... and pressure is only relative...

something we made up by moving one type of environment into another really... i.e. space capsule in space (earth atmosphere in the vacuum of space) or scuba diving... pressure increases as you decrease because have air inside your body, but if you were able to fill your lungs with some oxygenated liquid you would be unaffected by pressure...

purple-pillows

They likely wouldn't be able to survive at surface sea level. It's the same problem that scientists face trying to capture deep sea squid eggs - they pop in the lower pressure environment.

Anyway, I wonder what those eye spots are - real eyes would be useless that deep, unless they bioluminesce, or perhaps are modified into something else (EM field detectors maybe?)

klew

@Elasticity:

LastVigilante

Snail fish sand wedge. Drooool.....

stryder100

Wow -- imagine I had a digicam that could withstand that much pressure...

Pwnage

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I'm going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it. Anyone who wants to join me is more than welcome.

onewiththewurlitzer

anyone else wonder why they have such clearly defined eyes? no chance there's any light down there...

adhir

This is not the most hostile environment, by any stretch compared to this:

[en.wikipedia.org]

- temperatures ranging up to 400°C
- no access to sunlight
- water rich in hydrogen sulfide, a chemical highly toxic to most known organisms

johnnyabnormal

Such sinuous undulations. Wait for a researcher to base a fish-bot based on this design.

Cobol_Mongol

@Monty: They're actually eating some shrimp. I'm pretty sure they'd be just fine with some other fish though.

Jing_ta

@kosikutioner: What Pillows said about being filled with the same pressure is true. Just keep in mind that the pressure is not pressing down on them any more than it's pressing up and to the left and right. You don't need special bones if the pressure's not in one direction, like gravity.

Jing_ta

i wonder if they taste good as sashimi

krystar

Hmmm... I wonder where the idiots with their "Intelligent Design" Psedo-science would fall on this one. Are these part of God's plan? Looks to me like they evolved to exploit an open niche in the food chain.

The Terminator

Great article to digest before i head out to get some sushi. Thank you Gizmodo.

I think ill have the Unagi tonight.

aeroworks

"the equivalent to that of 1600 elephants standing on the roof of a Mini car"

So how the heck do those squishy little fish live down there?? Nature, you're just a crazy scientist, aren't ya.

unibrow4o9

Tadpoles and salamanders.

infiniteloop

so thats how long john silver's makes their lobster bites

tegronin

@Jing_ta: So... If these fish were brought to the surface, they would explode?

Lasarett

@phoenix27:
Shouldn't it be psia and not gage?

greimel

@nutbastard: Maybe that's a good thing. Slime eels are nasty.

Also, word to the wise - for some reason, my Google Chrome has not been playing nicely with video of late. I don't know why.

OMG! Ponies!

If you brought a snailfish up to the surface, would it explode?

re-cyclist

@Phenostar: God made them.

shockwaver

How the hell do these fish survive those depths?

Jitty

I'm sure these snailfish are used to living in complete darkness, or pretty close. I wonder if they're all blind now from that bit of light on them.

CampSteve

Carnivorous Sperm Fish from the bottom... nice title for a chessy movie :D

Erzengel

@PlayerX: If this is true then why do we invest all this money in fancy microscopes if we could just sperm jack some fruit flies.

jakeyjohn1

I wonder if these taste any good...mmmm snailfish filet.

leaverus

@Lasarett:

yes. the nitrogen in their blood would most likely effervesce.

Which means their bodies would boil like a fishy soda bottle.

Parapraxis

How do we actually know these are the worlds deepest fish, did we actually stay in one place or move around.

Did we go to the bottom of the deepest trench in the deepest part of the deepest ocean if so how the hell would we pick anything up with a camera, you can not see anything down there with anytype of light period, you cant see the sun so there would be no light to know what to record

utube2007

@kosikutioner: you see, if they described how the fish lived at that depth, ignorant people would says things such as. "i thought this was a gadget blog, not a fish blog." or some other equally smarmy and useless comment...

Charging_Mooses

Just a side issue here, but I'm assuming this camera rig was equipped with some pretty hefty floodlights, right?

JoshS

@tek_nic: that and we can never find them

lol123

@PlayerX: You cant post that and then not give us a link! [www.livescience.com] (That sperm looks like Don King!)

Curves

@willie333: I've heard they can't. Every time scientists try to bring these species up for study, they are dead by the time they reach the surface. I think the pressure (or lack of) is what causes this.

You would need to be able to capture the fish in a container that can hold a constant pressure for as long as they need to be alive for study.

I've heard that this is why we can't get living specimens of the Giant Squid.

tek_nic

@Jitty: On the other hand, the fish could be thinking "How could those beings surve those heights?"

ripfire

@RoscoPeeholePain: He's just saying that fish with teeth mangle fish like in the image below, as expected.

pzich

@lol123:
We've found a few now, but he's right they always die when they're brought up towards the surface.

DreDog

What I want to know is... what are the things that they are swimming above?

They are not rocks, if you look closely... that's some other kind of life form that they are hovering over.

dOk

What is cool is when those deep sea fish are pulled up.. When they hit the higher (lower pressure) waters, they explode. :) Their bodies aren't meant for low pressure. Pretty neat really.

MarkC

The light source has come out incredibly well for anything at that depth.

The footage is incredible, looks almost like Koi in a shallow pond.

jbang

@cardboredbox: Gee, thanks for pointing out that the grammar doesn't meet your impeccable standards. We're all so relieved that you've come here, pointed it out so the rest of us non-douchebag types can get on with it without that burden on our minds.

Eat that supurb grammar.

jbang

@Parapraxis: nitrogen bubbles = more like a fishy pint of Guinness

schtum

I'm actually kind of surprised these people thought there wouldn't be much life down there. If past discoveries have been any indication, life can thrive in all sorts of crazy places.

Yeah, it still is quite amazing though. I'm mostly surprised they look like giant tadpoles. Those shrimp swimming around are frickin' nasty though. It reminds me why I stay away from most seafood, namely crustaceans. GIANT BUGS!

albtms

Fish like that can't be brought up alive, at normal pressure they die so don't expect to see one at Sea World any time soon.

Nick_Bentley

Pretty cool!

TheBugMan

@schtum:

Um. Yum?

thegreyjedi

@nutbastard: just click in the youtube log and it will open in youtube. The video doesn't allow linking.

Ariel_Wollinger

@Claystil: a quick search shows the record for deepest living fish discovered at 8,370 meters.

Claystil

These are not the deepest living fish. The source article clearly states they set the record for the deepest living fish FILMED LIVE. It says nothing about them being the deepest living fish.

There's evidence of many species living happily and comfortable at depth over 1000 meters deeper than where these snailfish were filmed.

Claystil

That video is worthy of being made into a screensaver or an iTunes visualizer.
*Ooooooo! Pretty fishies!*

AeroBrat

@Phenostar:
h4x, the fish are using h4x.

roflwaffles

i cant wait to get these on my local sushi menu

spider2544

@onewiththewurlitzer:
Can I has script-girl?

Purple Dave

@phoenix27:
"If you went into space you would explode."

No you wouldn't. Maybe if you were turned into a human balloon, but the first thing that would happen to you in a hard vacuum is that all the moisture on your eyes and in your mouth/nose would instantly boil off (keep your eyes and mouth closed and you shouldn't suffer any adverse effects, provided you can get back into a pressurized environment pretty quickly). Hold your breath and you'll likely rupture the aveoli in your lungs. Don't hold your breath and you'll pass pretty quickly due to lack of oxygen. Ultimately, that's what will kill you, as solid mass doesn't expand enough in a vacuum to explode, your skin will still retain enough internal body pressure to keep your blood from boiling, vacuum has no temperature (therefore it's not _cold_, so you won't freeze...especially if you're getting roasted by unshielded solar radiation), and with all the air sucked out of your lungs you won't last more than a minute or two before there's no real chance of bringing you back.

This is all based on hard evidence, including animal testing from decades ago, and a few isolated incidents of accidental exposure to hard vaccuum within the NASA program. You can read about them here.

Purple Dave

@utube2007:
You send an artificial lightsource down with the camera. The nice thing, given that you can't see _anything_ that's not directly in the beam of light, is that these critters aren't spooked by bright lights flashing around, so they pretty much just ignore it (assuming they aren't blind...though all those bioluminescent fish like the anglerfish suggest they don't have to be).

It's actually a kinda weird thing, really. There's an island in the Galapagos that's populated by a species of bird with _no_ known predators. You can just walk up to them and they'll pretty much just ignore you unless you actually touch them. Even then they probably won't freak out.

Purple Dave

@adhir:
Maybe they see in different wavelengths, like infrared.

Purple Dave

@johnnyabnormal:
I saw an episode of American Scientific Frontiers where Bob Ballard was discussing his discovery of hydrothermal vents. The three things that really stuck with me were that:

1. They extended a temperature probe into the vent flow to see how hot it was...and the probe _melted_. Then they realized that it was made from the same material as the submersible they were in, and that the convection currents were drawing them towards the vent flow.

2. They had another instance where the suspension bladder (which looks sorta like an underwater zeppelin, except it's filled with gasoline for bouyancy in high-pressure environments) got torn on an outcropping of rock, and all they could do as they were ascending back to the surface was watch the depth gauge. He said there was enough inaccuracy in the gauge that depending on whether you were an optimist or a pessimist, they were either going to reach the surface or not before they lost bouyancy and began sinking again.

3. The submersible would fit three crewmembers, and there weren't enough viewports to go around, so they'd have to take turns looking out at stuff. Then he turned around and noticed one of the other crewmembers was paying attention to the TV monitor instead of the viewport (they had underwater cameras recording everything they were doing), at which point they realized how dumb it was to actually go down there in person when they could just send an ROV and watch the camera feed from the safety of the boat on the surface.

Purple Dave

@Curves: DON KING! hahahahaha

PlayerX

@jakeyjohn1: microscopes and tiny tweezers to tweak those tiny testicles. Was that too far?

PlayerX

@Jing_ta: I believe they were eating whatever was/is under those shrimp. The shrimp themselves look perfectly fine (fully intact).

bpapa9013

@basicvisual: WTF?

bpapa9013

awww, they're so cute! like little cave-type eyeless hagfish. I love the deep sea.

resonanteye

They're totally interesting too! That little one at the upper right tries to do a barrel roll twice and fails...then spends the rest of the video getting slapped around.

Eric Merrill

Its amazing they survive that much pressure. I bet if you took one out of the water the damn thing could fly and defy gravity. You'd have killer sperm fish attacking humans.

addiktion

@bpapa9013: Just keep nodding while slowly walking away. It's the only way to escape alive.

TheLostVikings

@Purple Dave: I wouldn't advise people to close their mouths on vacuum exposure if I were you, you mentioned the point yourself. Restricting the wildly expanding gas thats trying to force its way out of your torso to only your nose its a surefire way to blow the hell out of your lungs in no time.

Remember kids, even though no one can hear you scream in space, thats what you are supposed to do when dumped outside w/o a suit =P

TheLostVikings

While the fish are pretty neat-o, I think we needed a bit more info on the gadgetry involved, this being a supposed gadget site and all.

(Although lately it seems to have morphed into a quasi-political fun factory)

EricAlder

Oh the video had sound too!! Does it sound like that? 7500 meters under the ocean?!?!

Those fishes wasn't afraid of the lights those researchers had?!.. Or is it just usual for those fishes to see a torch floating around with them in the middle of the night?!

Saying that, what time was this video taken?

Chandru

@Phenostar: Never been to Jersey, I see.

amillians

@Lasarett: Yes. For the same reason water will begin to boil at room temperature if the pressure around the water is low enough. The O2 and other molecules that are gasses at STP (Standard Temperature and Pressure) would effervesce out of their blood stream and tissues. All of the tissues in the fish would basically begin to boil if brought to STP slowly. It would pretty much explode if brought to STP instantly.

High School science is cool

N@tedog

I cant see how flooding these fish, that live 4+ miles below the surface, with a 500W Floodlight can be anything but traumatic.

tastes like burning!

pitpawten

So how do they taste?

RacecarBoobTat

@kosikutioner:

They have a large bone.

tabaks

they do not seem like highly evolved at all, banking more on the retard side if you ask me.

Doesn't it looks like premature adulthood of our "normal" fish, right?

fuzzymemo

@Purple Dave: Sorry, you would feel like you are going to explode. All the air in your body is pressurized and nothing outside to counter-act that pressure.

No, you wouldn't explode like a Doom demon hit by a rocket launcher in a puff of blood. But yes, the air inside of you would be wanting to escape out.

phoenix27

@greimel: Ya you are correct.

phoenix27

what are they huddled over? eggs? dead shrimp?

RG_Shrike

wonder if they can find my car keys i dropped when i went fishing

MariaOzawa

@bosskev: haha - she probably be puking out asian racial comments since it's in japan

+ Watch video

MariaOzawa

@Purple Dave: Sends chills up the spine!

johnnyabnormal

Now we need them to take one of those fish and bring it to sea level... then wait for the POP!

Formito

That's crazy. Just like it said, you'd totally think that something living that deep would be near death it's whole life. I mean if we had to come up with new technology to film that deep, it's crazy that a squishy little fish can flourish.

DakotaEpic

Oh crap, I think I see my keys

UniComp

@Elasticity: Guess they are deep, balls deep

sgagnon3

@johnnyabnormal:
In their case, I'd expect it'd be a little warmer, and probably running down one pant leg or the other. Twice. Not once, but _twice_ they cheated death.

Purple Dave

@TheLostVikings:
It's more an issue for the eyes, which could suffer instant freezer-burn if too much moisture ends up boiling off of them.

@phoenix27:
Yes, you would _feel_ like you're going to explode (though only until you lose consciousness, which reportedly happens in about 15 seconds), but aside from the respiratory system, the human body is mostly solid and liquid mass. That stuff just doesn't expand the way gasses do. And remember, it's not the vaccuum of space pulling at your insides, but rather the 1 atmosphere of force that your body exerts outward upon itself that's the problem. As long as you don't try to hold your breath (in which case you'll rupture the aveoli in your lungs), you'll just get a really nasty case of the bends...provided you can survive in a zero-pressure environment long enough for that to be an issue. Basically, it's not unlike instantly shooting up from a depth with 2 atmospheres of pressure to a room at sea level that's completely devoid of oxygen. That last bit is still going to be the critical issue.

Purple Dave

So still................ Nobody gets that they record sound that far down. Seems sketchy at best.

gizmodohomepage

Camera Specs maybe? Amazing how much technology we need to get a camera down there, and those fish are moving down there with no problems at all. Camera + scientists you just got owned by fish. Go back to the drawing board and try emulating what they do. This could lead to breakthroughs.

ShubhaGlam