Few people get to discover new species. Even fewer have the opportunity to explore the deepest reaches of the oceans.

A Whitman College biology professor, along with researchers from several other universities around the world, recently achieved both of those milestones.

Paul Yancey is back on the private college’s Walla Walla campus after he and Whitman students Anna Downing and Chloe Weinstock used remote-controlled deep-sea vehicles to collect geological samples and conduct other studies of the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean.

The researchers were surprised when a snailfish, a tadpole-shaped fish with wing-like fins, swam into the vessel’s camera view during part of the expedition at 26,872 feet below sea level.

Yancey said it’s expeditions such as this one that are contributing to a greater understanding of such extreme environments.

“It’s still a bit of a mystery,” he said.

Yancey, who has a background in marine biology, had been planning the trip since 2009. He initially requested federal funding but he lost that support because of budget cutbacks. That led him to the Schmidt Ocean Institute, a research organization created by a Google executive and his wife, and its Hadal Ecosystem Studies, or HADES, expedition.

The institute’s research ship Falkor carried about 20 researchers and 20 crew to the seas above the trench west of Guam. The trench is home to the deepest point on the planet known as Challenger Deep, more than 35,000 feet below sea level. There have been several notable explorations of Challenger Deep in both manned and unmanned vehicles but Yancey and the other researchers wanted a more nuanced look at the ecosystem that makes up the trench.

“Many studies have rushed to the bottom of the trench, but from an ecological view that is very limiting,” said Jeff Drazen, co-chief scientist on the expedition, in a release. “It’s like trying to understand a mountain ecosystem by only looking at the summit.”

Researchers used five deep-sea vehicles called landers to explore and collect samples at depths ranging from 16,404 feet to 34,777 feet. They collected the deepest rock samples ever obtained from the inner slope of the trench.

Capturing a glimpse of the snailfish as it attacked and ate something from mud disturbed by a lander’s boring tool was an unexpected surprise, Yancey said. The HADES expedition wasn’t able to capture the fish or another like it with the lander.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBxsm5T2yN8&feature=youtu.be

Yancey and his students last year found animals living at great depths in a trench off of New Zealand have high concentrations of a molecule that shields their body’s cells from their high-pressure environment. The newly discovered snailfish could protect itself with similar molecules.

Those molecules are being applied to treatment of some human diseases caused by malformed proteins such as cystic fibrosis and Alzheimer’s disease.

Yancey said he hopes to make it onto a future expedition with the institute, one that may offer more mobility beneath the sea. The organization is considering building its own robotic sub that wouldn’t be limited to sitting on the ocean floor.

Ty Beaver: 509-582-1402; tbeaver@tricityherald.com; Twitter: @_tybeaver