No fish has been spotted further than 8000 metres below the ocean surface – now we know why that record may never be beaten
IN 1960, when Jacques Piccard made his epic dive to the deepest part of the ocean, 11 kilometres below the surface, he spotted a flatfish on the sea just as the submersible was about to touch down. "Just beneath us was some type of flatfish, resembling a sole, about 1 foot long and 6 inches across. Even as I saw him, his two round eyes on top of his head spied [us, and] extremely slowly, this flatfish swam away," Piccard wrote in his book Seven Miles Down. "Moving along the bottom, partly in the ooze and partly in the water, he disappeared into his night."
Seconds later, the submersible stirred up the sediment as it touched down. Piccard and Don Walsh saw nothing but milky ...
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