The Atacama Trench is a deep-water channel running along the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru, South America. In 2018, an international team of scientists used free-falling « landers » to study the trench, gathering images and specimens of deep-sea creatures. The team discovered a new snailfish species unique to the Atacama Trench and to all other known fish species.
October 12, 2022
The Atacama Trench is a deep-water channel running along the Pacific coast of Chile and Peru, South America. In 2018, an international team of scientists used free-falling « landers » to study the trench, gathering images and specimens of deep-sea creatures. The team discovered a new snailfish species unique to the Atacama Trench and to all other known fish species.
The small blue fish, named Paraliparis selti by the team— »selti » meaning « blue » in Kunza, the language of the indigenous peoples of the Atacama Desert—lives in the hadal zone, waters deeper than 6,000 meters, or about 20,000 feet.
The newly discovered species « doesn’t look like other snailfishes from the hadal zone, these ultradeep regions of the oceans, » says Thomas Linley, Ph.
