The brightly coloured specimen above (the colours are somewhat useless when you live where light can’t penetrate) is a member of the unhappily-named “flabby whalefish” species. It was trawled off the east coast of New Zealand, at a depth of more than 2 kilometres (1.3 miles). At the bottom of that deep blue sea, they did not expect to find many fish – and in fact it appears that the flabby whalefish has little company. This family of fish has been found as deep as 3,500 metres; has small eyes – they are pretty useless in this environment after all – and instead the fish tend to have a very well developed lateral line to detect vibrations.
It also lacks any ribs, which is perhaps why it appears so “flabby”.