Slinky Fish of Wake Island’s Deep
Many of the fish that inhabit the deep-sea look a bit different than the ones we’re used to seeing in the shallows. While exploring an Unnamed Seamount ~60 nautical miles southeast of Wake Island, thousands of meters beneath the surface, we encountered a few unique aquatic friends. Halosaurs (family Halosauridae) are eel-shaped fish that only live in waters so deep that we only really see them thanks to ROVs like our own Hercules. We spotted this individual at 3,789 meters (12,431 feet) deep.
After that, upslope at 3,434 meters (21,266 feet), we came across an arrowtooth eel (genus Ilyophis) making its way along the seafloor. Despite its name (and appearance), this too is technically a fish rather than an eel. These are in the same family as cutthroat eels but this individual was later identified to genus due to its small pectoral fins, overbite, and defined white pores along its lateral line.
Ocean Exploration Trust's Exploration of Wake Island's Deep-Sea expedition (NA181) is supported by NOAA Ocean Exploration via the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute.
Exploration of Wake Island's Deep Sea
Located roughly midway between the Hawaiian and Mariana Islands, Wake Island is one of the most isolated land masses on Earth. While there have been some recent expeditions to this remote region, the vast majority of the 407,241 square kilometers of seafloor surrounding Wake remains unmapped and uncharacterized, thereby representing one of the most poorly surveyed areas under US jurisdiction.
