Deepest sea urchin
- Who
- Pourtalesia heptneri
- What
- 7340 metre(s)
- Where
- Indonesia
- When
- 1978
The deepest-living known sea urchin is Pourtalesia heptneri, of the Pourtalesiidae family of abyssal urchins, which has been recovered from a depth of 7,340 metres (24,081 feet) in the Banda Trench off Indonesia in the Indian Ocean. The discovery was recorded by A N Mironov in the journal Zoologicheskii Zhurnal in 1978.
The deepest-living echinoderm overall is the sea cucumber (holothurian) Prototrochus bruuni (formerly Myriotrochus bruuni), a specimen of which was retrieved from 10,730 m (35,203 ft) in the Tonga Trench in the south-west Pacific Ocean by the Soviet research vessel Vityaz in 1977.