TEMPO.CO, Walla Walla - Whitman biology professor Paul Yancey and his students, Anna Downing and Chloe Weinstock, have returned from the first detailed study of the Mariana Trench aboard Schmidt Ocean Institute's research vessel Falkor. The Mariana Trench—located in the Western Pacific near Guam—has been the focus of high-profile voyages to conquer Challenger Deep, the deepest place on Earth.

This recent expedition to the Trench targeted multiple depths and found active thriving communities of animals. The expedition also set many new records, including the deepest rock samples ever collected and the discovery of new fish species at the greatest depths ever recorded.

Science Daily wrote “this Hadal Ecosystem Studies (HADES) expedition departed from other deep-sea trench research by sampling a broad spectrum of environments using five deep-sea vehicle systems called landers at specifically targeted depths from 5000 to 10,600 meters (16,404 to 34,777 feet).”

A concerted effort was made to gain a better understanding of the interplay between life and geologic processes across the entire hadal zone, rather than solely focusing on the deepest point in the Mariana Trench.

The expedition also made several new records, including for the deepest living fish either caught or seen on video. Setting the record at 8,143 meters, (26,872 feet) was a completely unknown variety of snailfish, which stunned scientists when it was filmed several times during seafloor experiments.

The white translucent fish had broad wing-like fins and an eel-like tail, and slowly glided over the bottom. Moreover, the expedition also retrieved the deepest rock samples from the inner slope of the Trench, representing some of the earliest volcanic eruptions of the Mariana Island arc.

ERWIN Z | SCIENCEDAILY