Weird sea creature caught on film by an ROV

Originally posted by xDeadcowx
Imagine something like that floating in the Air... It would be terrifying.

DC

Can you imagine it dropping out of the air over your head!

Oh no, the return of the Polypropylene Monster. Quick, shoot it with popcorn from a cell phone!

It's a deepstaria enigmatica, I've seen videos of these things before.. always interesting.. they are a type of Jelly Fish

Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org...

Here is a great video on this creature and it's relatives.
A few surprising things are revealed.

My quesses would be tissue, possibly from a whale stomach? It reminds me of tripe with the honeycomb cellular structure. My second guess would be a colonial jellyfish, a siphonophores. Jellyfish can get huge. I wish there was something to give a size of scale in the video, though. It could be massive or no bigger than a grocery bag.

DELETE: someone beat me to it I was posting another video

reply to post by stars15k


60 cm.
Or about 2 feet. So it's not gigantic, but fairly large

I'm not sure how to read the info around the edges - does anyone see at what depth
the ROV is filming?

reply to post by TXTriker


This one is recording at about 5000 feet deep.
upper right of the display

reply to post by TXTriker

lavus tubus bubblus, apparently a few escaped captivity in the late seventies and have been breeding ever since

What's funny is that people keep mentioning things like garbage bags and stomachs.
If you watch some of the videos on this creature and it's ilk.
They behave as if they were one giant stomach, with a garbage bag style closure on one end.

And BTW the undulations are caused by the ROV steering jets. Left alone these things look more like a big half-opened umbrella.

Thinking that it is some type of jelly fish, however, the anus or proboscis that it had with what appeared to be some type of sex organs close to the base of it protrusion might exclude it from being a jelly. It also looked to have a central nervous system, ganglia, like an orthopod where only the most sophisticated jelly (box jelly) is known to possess that feature. This could be a complete prehistorical throwback or something that just became real as recent as the last 100K years of so. Either way, this animal albeit a protostome or deuterostome is fascinating.

I've seen this before, but it is mesmerizing. I watched it twisting around again just now. It would be great to see something like that in person, as long as it doesn't decide to excrete something to digest me.

Originally posted by kennyb72
reply to post by TXTriker

 

lavus tubus bubblus, apparently a few escaped captivity in the late seventies and have been breeding ever since

I escaped captivity in the seventies too, and I also did my share of breeding.

Originally posted by spacedoubt
What's funny is that people keep mentioning things like garbage bags and stomachs.
If you watch some of the videos on this creature and it's ilk.
They behave as if they were one giant stomach, with a garbage bag style closure on one end.

And BTW the undulations are caused by the ROV steering jets. Left alone these things look more like a big half-opened umbrella.

It is extremely interesting and beautiful to watch it undulate. Too bad you need the ROV to make that happen. I think it makes it seem so graceful.

reply to post by TXTriker


Yeah, I felt that way too.
I mean, it even looked as if it returned to the front-center camera position out of curiosity.

sorry double post
blame the coffee

reply to post by SeventhSin


That's interesting stuff. Are you a student of marine biology, or just fascinated like I am?
It's like alien life, right on the big BLUE marble.

For those who might be interested. There is another Video made by the research group of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, in California...Located Right on Cannery Row, of Steinbeck fame.

"There's no such thing as a jellyfish"

Originally posted by sylent6
At first I thought it was a plastic grocery bag but then, I just finish watching the video and I was impressed. I have never seen anything like that before.

Its crazy how we continue to discover these unusual creatures in our ocean. Just the thought of others we don't yet know about.

I appreciate this very much!

I thought it was a plastic bag at first too. At one point, I wondered if it was placenta, amniotic sac and umbilical cord of a giant sea mammal? I just do not know!

Originally posted by spacedoubt
reply to post by TXTriker

 

Yeah, I felt that way too.
I mean, it even looked as if it returned to the front-center camera position out of curiosity.

It also really looked like it was putting on a show for the camera. Do you know if there is a particular area of the ocean where they live?