New ghostly sea creatures discovered 21,000 feet beneath the sea in one of the Pacific Ocean's deepest trenches

Scientists have discovered three new species of elusive Snailfish in some of the deepest waters on Earth.

An international team exploring the ultra-deep Atacama Trench in Southeast Pacific discovered three types of fish, since dubbed the pink, the blue, and the purple Atacama Snailfish, swimming 6500 to 7500 meters down.

The experts say these unusual creatures are remarkably well-equipped to live in such a harsh environment, with a mostly gelatinous body that would collapse on itself when brought up to the surface.

Footage of the newly-discovered species shows the ghostly translucent creatures swimming close to the seafloor, the Daily Mail reports.

The team captured more than 100 hours of video using a baited camera system off the coast of Peru and Chile.

At its deepest point, the instrument sat 8000 meters beneath the surface. The Atacama Trench stretches nearly 6,000 kilometers (3,728 miles) long and over 8,000 meters deep along the west coast of South America.

Here, snailfish (from the family Liparidae) are at the top of the food chain.

“There is something about the snailfish that allows them to adapt to living very deep,’ says Dr Thomas Linley of Newcastle University.

‘Beyond the reach of other fish, they are free of competitors and predators. As the footage clearly shows, there are lots of invertebrate prey down there and the snailfish are the top predator, they seem to be quite active and look very well-fed.

‘Their gelatinous structure means they are perfectly adapted to living at extreme pressure and in fact the hardest structures in their bodies are the bones in their inner ear which give them balance and their teeth.

‘Without the extreme pressure and cold to support their bodies they are extremely fragile and melt rapidly when brought to the surface.’

Along with the snailfish, the researchers also spotted rarely seen long-legged isopods known as Munnopsids.