This deep-sea ‘giant’ is actually made up of millions of ‘clones’
Just in case you didn’t think the ocean wasn’t alien enough, researchers off Western Australia have filmed an otherworldly underwater creature comprised of millions of interconnected “clones.” Ecstatic scientists are calling the specimen the largest ever discovered.
“Check out this beautiful *giant* siphonophore Apolemia recorded on #NingalooCanyons expedition,” read a Monday Twitter post by the Schmidt Ocean Institute, noting its “strange UFO-like feeding posture.” Indeed, the deep-sea denizen’s spiral-tacular shape and luminescent color might evoke an interstellar anomaly from a science-fiction flick.
“Omg I have CHILLS. This is an ANIMAL. I’m guessing it’s over a hundred feet long, forming a spiral in the middle of the deep sea,” weighed in Rebecca Helm, assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Asheville in a lengthy Twitter dissertation. “I’ve gone on numerous expeditions and have never, EVER, seen anything like this.”
“This animal is a kind of jelly,” she added, noting that it’s “made of millions of interconnected clones, like if the Borg and the Clone Wars had a baby together.”
And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the jellyfish expert said that “there are about a dozen different jobs a clone can do in the colony, & each clone is specialized to a particular task.” As depicted in an accompanying video, one of the aquatic colony’s jobs is feeding, which the siphonophore accomplishes by dangling its tendrils in a line formation in the open ocean. This particular specimen is unique, Helm points out, because it is “hunting in a galaxy-like spiral, the long wisp-like tentacles draped below.”
And at almost 50 feet in diameter and about 154 feet long, the siphonophore could be the largest one “ever recorded,” writes Schmidt Ocean on Twitter. To put the find in perspective, Helm said that most of the colonies she encounters are between about 7 inches and 3 feet long.
Social-media oceanographers are going gaga over the discovery.
“And it doesn’t know we exist. Trippy how many different worlds are on this planet!” gushed one siphonophore supporter on Twitter.
“Looks kind of like a topographic map,” said another.
It’s likely the colossal congregation isn’t the only anomalous siphonophore prowling the ocean. Helm wrote, “There are millions, probably billions of underwater siphonophore galaxies out there just like this one. As we explore the ocean’s more, who knows what other creatures we will see.”
In another watershed discovery this past January, “walking sharks” were observed taking a stroll off the coast of Australia.