Scientists discover a giant prawn thousands of metres under the sea in New Zealand’s Kermadic Trench.
The ‘supergiant amphipod’, as it has been described, measures almost 12 inches in length – ten times the size of the normal species – and was found 4.3 miles under the surface of the ocean.
Scientists, who say the crustacean is closely related to the sandhopper, were dumbfounded by their find.
“It’s always great to be on a ship, where something unusual comes up on the deck and when there’s just that little moment, it only lasts a microsecond when everyone looks at one another and you know that you’ve got something special,” said Ashely Rowden from the New Zealand Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA)
Mr Rowan added that they had many questions about the size of the giant prawn.
“Is it because of the environmental conditions of that location, or those specific locations of where the records have come from, is it to do with the food environment, so lots of questions start spinning around straight away,” he said.
Supergiant amphipods have been found only once before, in the 1980s, and NIWA said it has yet to determine if the latest catch was a new species.