Deepest nautilus

After laying bait on the seafloor at a depth of 703 metres (2,306 feet) on Bougainville Reef in the northern Coral Sea, off north-east Australia, several specimens of chambered nautilus (Nautilus pompilius) were recorded by a remotely operated vehicle. This is the greatest depth that these shelled cephalopods have been observed, with the findings published in PLoS One on 22 February 2011.

The study, a collaboration between the University of Queensland (Australia) and the University of Washington (USA), tracked the movements of nautili at day and night via tracking devices placed on 11 individuals and also ROV observations. The findings suggest that these molluscs move frequently between depths of 100 and 700 m (330–2,300 ft) at night, while during the day they tend to either rest at the shallower end of their range or be found actively foraging at the deeper end.