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Between mid-2018 and early 2019, the expedition Five Deeps, whose mission is to explore “the deepest point in each of the five oceans”, was inspecting the nostril Java (in the Indian ocean, off the coast of Indonesia). To know what happened to those depths, that they come to the 7.176 m , there was three chambers of bait autonomous , with different sensors that were to capture a unique discovery: octopus where it had never been seen before.

Thus, the team led by Alan Jamieson , of the University of Newcastle, was able to make two videos in a high definition two octopuses “Dumbo” , the first test of cephalopods living beyond 6,000 meters that had been recorded previously. In particular, one of them was captured to 6.957 meters, about 1,800 meters deep than the previous record. The results have been recently published in the journal “Marine Biology”.

Pictures of octopuses dumbo captured in the depths – The Five Deeps ExpeditionEl octopus dumbo of the deep

According to the study, there were two direct observations in situ of the octopodo Grimpoteuthis , commonly known as octopus Dumbo. The first came to 5.760 , which already represented a record-high of 615 meters with respect to the earlier trade mark, obtained in 1971. The second to 6.957 m , it is even more important, as this is the first record of a cephalopod to depth hadal (that is to say, beyond 6,000 meters), which extends the habitat of these animals thousands of meters in the ocean.

The cephalopods are not usually considered as characteristic of the benthic fauna (found on the bottom of the oceans and seas) and to depths of hadal. However, occasional samples of trawl open network they had already done to think to the marine biologists that these cephalopods could be present even in the 8.000 metres of depth . However, he had not managed to see one of these beings beyond 6,000 meters, which had always been a matter of discrepancy scientific.

This finding, which has also been recorded in HD video (it is part of the documentary ” Deep Planet “, from Discovery Channel ), it assumes that the benthic habitat potential is available for cephalopods increased from 75 to 99% of the seafloor global .

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