And some anglerfish are even somewhat cute, such as the sea toad, which resembles a red handball with foot-like fins. Most species never even reach a foot long, and the males are smaller than cashews. ![]() While an Atlantic bluefin tuna can grow up to 13 feet long and weigh 2,000 pounds, the largest female anglerfish can grow about three feet long. And most anglerfish, the unofficial ambassadors of the deep, are simply not that big. The quintessentially scary fish we often associate with the deep ocean, such as anglerfish with candle-like lures, sword-shaped viperfish, or the menacingly snouted goblin shark, all live in the twilight zone. This hairy anglerfish Caulophryne pelagica doesn't make it below 2,500 meters. This is about 35,876 feet deep, deeper than an upside-down Mount Everest plus a 7,000-foot carrot (a 7,000-foot anything, but I think a giant carrot is a fun visualization). The absolute deepest part of the ocean is the Challenger Deep, located in the southern end of the Mariana Trench, which plunges to about 10,395 meters. The abyssopelagic zone, or, more casually, the abyss, begins at 4,000 meters, followed by the hadal zone at depths of 6,000 meters and deeper. The midnight zone begins below 1,000 meters, depths totally devoid of sunlight. This region is called the twilight zone, and the minuscule amount of light that trickles down here is too scarce for photosynthesis. The deep sea officially starts where sunlight dwindles, at around depths of 200 meters. While many nature-related accounts inspire wonder, Fedortsov's never-ending stream of horrible fish inspires revulsion.īut in recent years, as deep-sea technology advances and scientists set out more baited traps to attract fish from the deepest swaths of the sea, I've developed an unshakeable and only quasi-vibe-based theory of the aesthetics of deep-sea fish, which is this: The deeper you go, the cuter the fish. So we should expect that fish adapted to that extreme habitat look so strange, weirdly shaped, and loathsome when viewed in the light of this one. The freezing temperatures, crushing pressures, and unrelenting darkness of the deep sea render their ecosystem very unlike our own. They are scary and gross, which makes sense, scientifically speaking. Their eyes bulge out of their faces their skin sags like slime. The Russian fisherman Roman Fedortsov has built an online following by posting close-ups of deep-sea creatures caught in fishing trawls, whose bodies have often been mangled by the sharp change in pressure and temperature at the surface.
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