Scientists have filmed a snailfish five miles underwater in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench south of Japan. It is the deepest fish ever recorded.

“We have spent over 15 years researching these deep snailfish,” Alan Jamieson, head of the Minderoo-UWA Deep-Sea Research Centre, said in a statement. “There is so much more to them than simply the depth, but the maximum depth they can survive is truly astonishing.”

In September, Jamieson and colleagues from the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology set off on a two-month research expedition of the Izu-Ogasawara and Ryukyu trenches near Japan, part of a 10-year study into fish that can survive at extreme depths.

Scientists managed to film a juvenile snailfish 27,350 feet underwater in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, the deepest fish on record, and a few days later caught two snailfish in traps set 26,320 feet underwater. Before this expedition, no one had seen or caught a single fish in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench, Jamieson said.

“The Japanese trenches were incredible places to explore,” he said. “They are so rich in life, even all the way at the bottom.”

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