The Most Common Deep Sea Predator Nobody Talks About

Added: 2026-04-29

[00:00:01]In 2018, the University of Hawaii sent a camera to 3,000 m with a piece of dead fish to see what shows up.

[00:00:10]What showed up turned out to be the largest gathering of fish ever recorded in the abyssal deep sea.

[00:00:17]Hundreds of cutthroat eels emerged from water that looked completely empty moments before.

[00:00:24]Nobody expected that many.

[00:00:27]Nobody expected that response at all.

[00:00:31]This is Ilophus arcs, the cutthroat eel, and almost nobody has heard of it.

[00:00:40]The cutthroat eel gets its name from the gill slits on its throat that look like a cut across the neck.

[00:00:47]That's it. That's the whole reason for the name.

[00:00:52]What's more interesting is that the eyes are small for the size of the animal.

[00:00:57]The eyes are almost decorative at this depth. And next to them, these nostril-like openings are doing most of the actual work, detecting chemical traces dissolved in the water and picking up electrical signals from nearby animals.

[00:01:13]The eyes are almost useless at this depth.

[00:01:17]There hasn't been light here for the animal to evolve useful vision around.

[00:01:22]And yet, it finds food.

[00:01:27]It found that bait package at almost 2 miles down fast enough to swarm it with hundreds of individuals.

[00:01:35]Noah has encountered this animal over 300 times across the deep Pacific and Atlantic in deep canyons off the US coast and on unnamed seamounts in the middle of the Pacific.

[00:01:47]When they went to the Mariana Trench, they even found it there too, thriving.

[00:01:55]It is genuinely one of the most common large predators in the deep ocean.

[00:02:00]The deep sea has a lot of those.

[00:02:04]This cut-throat eel was filmed off the coast of Rhode Island with a rather generous chunk of fish.

[00:02:11]It is just hanging there in open water eating it.

[00:02:15]In the deep ocean where food is scarce, it pays to overindulge.

[00:02:20]Because it could be a while before the next meal shows up.

[00:02:24]The eel has it sideways and is working it down whole.

[00:02:29]And the fish has not stopped moving.

[00:02:32]This is not scavenging.

[00:02:36]This is an active hunt.

[00:02:38]And the prey is alive while it is being swallowed.

[00:02:49]The cutthroat eel does not finish a meal in open water if it can avoid it.

[00:02:56]It finds a crevice, pulls the food in, and eats somewhere nothing else can follow.

[00:03:04]This one is from the Mariana Trench.

[00:03:07]Different expedition, different depth.

[00:03:10]And if you look closely, a slightly different animal.

[00:03:15]It's two-toned in a way the others were not.

[00:03:20]Scientists watching the footage were not entirely sure what species it was.

[00:03:26]Something about it did not match.

[00:03:29]It looks like a cutthroat eel, but the color is not normal.

[00:03:34]Maybe something about the Mariana Trench environment changed it over time.

[00:03:40]Then it notices the R ov and it's not happy.

[00:03:46]That is a yawn. It is genuinely disoriented.

[00:03:52]R OV lights are brighter than anything this animal has ever encountered in its entire life.

[00:04:00]It has no evolved response to the situation because this situation did not exist before humans started sending equipment down here.

[00:04:12]Its eel sensors are not working properly.

[00:04:19]A predator that navigates perfectly in total darkness, completely undone by a light it was never supposed to see.

[00:04:28]And then it headbutted directly into the rock.

[00:04:39]This single eel moving through manganese crusted rock was filmed at 2,115 m.

[00:04:48]Look at the head.

[00:04:52]That scarring shows something got to this animal at some point and it survived whatever that was.

[00:04:59]Down here, you have to share the deep ocean with other predators that think you are just an easy meal.

[00:05:07]The scars are just evidence of how difficult the deep sea actually is.

[00:05:14]Scientists genuinely believe that going down there helps us understand these creatures and the environment they live in.

[00:05:21]Others argue that sending ROVs down is affecting animals that have never evolved to deal with man-made objects or artificial light.

[00:05:33]And we already saw what that looks like in this video.

[00:05:38]For now, we do not have a full understanding of which side is right.

[00:05:45]Maybe both are.

[00:05:49]What do you think? Are we helping these animals by studying them or are we making their lives harder?

[00:06:00]Let us know in the comments.