I absolutely LOVE the deep ocean. The things that we uncover daily never cease to amaze me. Today, in particular, is a great day. Video footage has surfaced (no pun intended) of a strange, gelatinous ‘creature’ that defies explanation. Dailymail alerted me to the story:

“A mysterious ocean ‘blob’ has been recorded by a deep-sea remote-controlled underwater camera. The creature looks like nothing seen before, with speculators suggesting it is everything from a jellyfish to the remains of a whale placenta.

While, at a quick glance, the description of a jellyfish makes sense, the creature has organs and appendages never spotted on a jellyfish before.

Meanwhile it could be a whale placenta, but if that is the case then the hexagonal shapes on the skin are a mystery.

Another suggestion is Deepstaria Enigmatica, another rarely-studied jellyfish, which like most of its kind is colourless.

However it has reported to have a brown stomach, with one description saying the passages to the stomach are ‘somewhat irregular-edged, forming a reticulate network’.

This might explain the hexagonal markings on the top of the creature – but again, what are the organs doing there?

Another mystery – a man-made one, this time – is exactly where this video was filmed. It was added to YouTube on April 27 this year, and appears to have been filmed two days earlier, but the poster did not leave any other details about the sighting.”

Definitely check out the bizarre footage and let me know in the comments what you guys think this thing could be!!

** EDIT: we now know what this thing is!! It’s called Deepstaria enigmatica, a very rare deep sea jellyfish that swims ‘open’ like an umbrella waiting for something to fall into it. When a poor creature does touch the ‘umbrella,’ the animal contracts and resumes the normal jellyfish bell shape with its prey inside of it. Read more here.

AND a new video has been released of this bizarre creature. MUST SEE!