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?
** 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!