wired sea creature

Well, a bit deep to use our gear.....

Wired Sea Creature

Man, how much i would love to dive down there!

Chris

I thought it was a plastic bag at first. Really strange... Never seen anything like it.

Yeah me too,

but it has organs and a anus/mouth/breathing/jet tube.

Very strange is also the honeycomb pattern on the "foil"

Jelly, Deepstaria enigmatica. There was a nice blog post about it on Deep Sea News, May 9, explaining the various body parts & history - http://deepseanews.com/

and pics of one in normal position on the facebook jelly watch page -

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=101...e=1&theater

Incidentally, if you don't know it already, Deep Sea News is a fantastic marine biology blog. Even when I'm overwhelmed by stuff & drop everything else I still check it on a daily basis. Enjoy!

Wowww Leslie,

i am deeply impressed of your knowledge!

I posted the video here to show it to a broad audience and you gave us the answer 3 hours later...

I never expected that somebody will know what it is.

Thank you so much!

Chris

I only know it because I read Deep Sea News, otherwise I would have been as clueless as a duck!

Does anyone know the size of that specimen in the video (rough estimat)? How big could they get, and what size prey do they take. Is that known or is there any way to make an educated guess?

John McCracken

The first one Deepstaria enigmatica was taken at 723 m in the San Diego Trough; it was about 60 cm across. You can read the original description at http://sabella.mba.ac.uk/2457/

Wow, that is enigmatic indeed!

Chris your not suggesting it's all done with wires are you?

Cheers,

Jim.

Thanks Leslie, for putting it to scale. I was a bit disappointed to hear it was only 60 cm across rather than 10 meters, but we don't know what other creatures lurk down there.

John McCracken

The first one Deepstaria enigmatica was taken at 723 m in the San Diego Trough; it was about 60 cm across. You can read the original description at http://sabella.mba.ac.uk/2457/

thought it was a plastic bag at first ! that's really strange !

Steve Haddock, jelly expert at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute has revised the identification - it's the other species of Deepstaria, D. reticulum. He's posted this video

Check out some of the other deep sea videos on the MBARI youtube site as well. Great stuff!