First photos of the incredible snailfish swimming more than 8,300 meters below the surface near Japan, the deepest observation of a fish ever recorded

• Scientists photographed a snailfish at 8,336 meters below the ocean, the deepest recording in history.
• Researchers spotted the fish in the Izu-Ogasawara trench near Japan, according to a statement.

Scientists photographed a snailfish swimming 8,336 meters below sea level near Japan, making it the deepest recorded fish ever caught on camera, the University of Western Australia said in a statement Monday.

Previously, the deepest recorded fish was spotted 8,178 meters down in the Mariana Trench, according to BBC News.

Scientists dropped an autonomous "lander" camera into the Izu-Ogasawara Trench near Japan and filmed the snailfish that they estimated to be at or "very close to" the maximum depth that any fish can survive, according to BBC.

"If this record is broken, it would only be by minute increments, potentially by just a few meters," Professor Alan Jamieson, a University of Western Australia deep-sea scientist, told the outlet.

It was a juvenile of unknown snailfish species of the genus Pseudoliparis, however, scientists did not capture a specimen to fully identify the species, according the university. Instead, the researchers trapped several fish slightly higher up in the water at 8,022 meters, which were identified as Pseudoliparis belyaevi, and set the record for the deepest fish ever caught.

The mission is part of a multi-year into the deepest fish populations in the world — and the discovery was part of a collaboration between the Minderoo-UWA Deep Sea Research Centre and a team from the Tokyo University of Marine Science and Technology.

"We have spent over 15 years researching these deep snailfish; there is so much more to them than simply the depth, but the maximum depth they can survive is truly astonishing," Jamieson, chief scientist of the expedition, said in a statement.

The previous deepest recorded fish in the Mariana Trench was identified as a Mariana snailfish, which had been known to scientists since 2014, Insider reported at the time. Snailfish live in the deepest part of the ocean, known as the hadal zone, where depths reach 6,000 to 11,000 meters and no light penetrates, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

Jamieson speculated that the fish were able to survive greater depths than those found in the Mariana Trench due to the Izu-Ogasawara's slightly warmer waters, the BBC reported.

"We predicted the deepest fish would be there and we predicted it would be a snailfish," Jamieson said according to the outlet. "I get frustrated when people tell me we know nothing about the deep sea. We do. Things are changing really fast."