''Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis'', or the hadal snailfish, is a species of

snailfish The Liparidae, commonly known as snailfish or sea snails, are a family of marine scorpaeniform fishes. Widely distributed from the Arctic to Antarctic Oceans, including the oceans in between, the snailfish family contains more than 30 genera ...

from the

hadal zone The hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches. The hadal zone ranges from around below sea level, and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions. The cumula ...

of the Northwest

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

, including the Kuril–Kamchatka and

Japan Trench The Japan Trench is an oceanic trench part of the Pacific Ring of Fire off northeast Japan. It extends from the Kuril Islands to the northern end of the Izu Islands, and is at its deepest. It links the Kuril–Kamchatka Trench to the north and ...

es. In October 2008, a team from British and Japanese institutes discovered a shoal of ''Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis'' at a depth of about in the Japan Trench. These were, at the time, the deepest living

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of ...

ever recorded on film. The record was surpassed by a type of snailfish filmed at a depth of in December 2014, and extended in May 2017 when another snailfish was filmed at a depth of . This deepest-water so-called ethereal snailfish remain undescribed, but a close relative found only slightly shallower in the Mariana Trench was described as ''

Pseudoliparis swirei ''Pseudoliparis swirei'', the Mariana snailfish or Mariana hadal snailfish, is a species of snailfish found at hadal depths in the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean. It is known from a depth range of , including a capture at the deepe ...

'' in late 2017.

References

Liparidae Fish described in 1955 Taxa named by Anatoly Andriyashev {{Scorpaeniformes-stub