A.V.G. and G.G. gratefully acknowledge the financial support received from the BIOICE program; J.C.X. acknowledges the financial support received from Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT; Portugal); and F.R.C. acknowledges funding via a postdoctoral grant (SFRH/BPD/95372/2013) from FCT and the European Social Fund (POPH; EU). This study benefited from the strategic project UID/MAR/04292/2019, granted to MARE, and is part of the long-term monitoring project BAS-CEPH, and of SCAR Ant-ERA, and ICED research programs. In the time of specimen collection H.J.H. received funding from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) through a Rubicon grant (#825.09.016) to H.J.H., and by a grant (CP1218) to H.J.H. of the Cluster of Excellence 80 ‘The Future Ocean’. ‘The Future Ocean’ is funded within the framework of the Excellence Initiative by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) on behalf of the German federal and state governments. We also thank DFG for financial support to H.J.H. under the grant HO 5569/2–1 that supports the Emmy Noether Junior Research Group of H.J.H. We thank the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Dr. Dan Kamikawa for organizing the collection of specimens for our study during West Coast Groundfish Slope/Shelf Bottom Trawl Surveys executed by NOAA, National Marine Fisheries Service, Northwest Fisheries Science Center. We also thank Dr. Bruce Robison of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute for facilitating and supporting the work on Vampyroteuthis by R.S. and H.J.H.