{"id":3596,"date":"2022-02-06T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-06T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/?p=3596"},"modified":"2022-02-08T07:51:27","modified_gmt":"2022-02-08T07:51:27","slug":"researchers-found-the-deepest-dwelling-squid-more-than-6-km-under-the-sea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/modernsciences.org\/staging\/4414\/researchers-found-the-deepest-dwelling-squid-more-than-6-km-under-the-sea\/","title":{"rendered":"Researchers Found the \u201cDeepest-Dwelling\u201d Squid More Than 6 km Under the Sea"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

An underwater expedition made news early in April of last year for successfully finding the USS Johnston<\/em><\/a>, considered one of the deepest shipwrecks ever found considering its staggering depth of 6.5 km (4 mi). Having been sunk under the waves of the Philippine Sea back in WWII during a naval battle off the coast of the Philippine island of Samar, the warship rested under the sea for decades until an intrepid team of explorers led by Caladan Oceanic founder Victor Vescovo finally gave the ship its first glimpse of light in almost 80 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What wasn\u2019t immediately noted in the news, however, is that the team actually made a previous dive just days before. There, the team was a few kilometers off their target\u2014which normally would have been the end of the story had they not found something remarkable swimming around: a squid that apparently lived some 6 km (3.7 mi) underwater. Their stunning find was published in the journal Marine Biology<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lead author Alan Jamieson actually encountered another bigfin squid some seven (7) years earlier back in 2014, pictured above; this one lived some 4.9 km (16,000 ft) underwater in an entirely different area. The one that Jamieson and team found off the coast of the Philippines is likely another member of this genus of squid, known as Magnapinnidae. (Jamieson et al, 2014) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The sea critter swam gracefully at a distance and was spotted through the lens of Vescovo\u2019s two-person submersible by lead author Dr. Alan Jamieson, from the University of Western Australia School of Biological Sciences and Oceans Institute, as he scoured through the video recordings of the dive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jamieson took the footage and handed it over to Smithsonian Institution Curator of Cephalopods, zoologist, and co-author Michael Vecchione, who confirmed the seemingly deepest-sea squid as a magnapinnid<\/em> squid<\/em>, otherwise known as bigfin squid<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This short animation displays the peculiar bigfin squid in action at its staggering depth of 6 km beneath the Philippine Trench. (Jamieson\/Vecchione, 2022) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Vecchione calls the peculiar squid \u201cweird\u201d in a statement to the Smithsonian<\/a>, as \u201c[they] drift along with their arms spread out and these really long, skinny, spaghetti-like extensions dangling down underneath them.\u201d According to Vecchione, the squid uses these extensions to capture their prey. “This dive showed that multiple types of cephalopods can live in at least the upper parts of these really deep ocean trenches,\u201d Vecchione added in an email to LiveScience<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute deep-sea ecologist Bruce Robison calls the find \u201cfascinating\u201d due to the presence of the squid in the area. As squid are often top predators in a so-called \u201ccomplex ecological web,\u201d Robison believes there may be more deep-sea creatures within the vicinity that have yet to be discovered and described.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The photos taken of the actual squid, determined to be a species of Magnapinna<\/em> squid, were compared to previous photos taken of its cousins from another part of the world to confirm its identity. (Jamieson\/Vecchione, 2022) <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The find also brings in other questions in scientific discussion\u2014not the least of which is the question of what adaptations the squids and other creatures around it needed to survive at such extreme depths, where pressures are around 600 times greater than those at the water\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remarkably, this wasn\u2019t the only discovery made by Jamieson and Vescovo during the dive; a separate expedition back in 2020 gave the world its deepest-ever octopus sighting<\/a>, and at around the same time that they found the deep-sea squid, they also found a jellyfish swimming around some 10 km underwater<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Just two weeks ago, it appears we beat our own 2020 record of 9000m for the deepest jellyfish ever filmed. This clip is from 10,000m in the Philippine Trench, a gorgeous trachymedusae called Crossata. (Identified by Prof. Alan Jamieson, our Chief Scientist) pic.twitter.com\/eBhKlYvAi2<\/a><\/p>— Victor Vescovo (@VictorVescovo) April 5, 2021<\/a><\/blockquote>