Joel Kontinen
Our world is full of wonders. The deep sea is a place for most of them.
The Five Deeps Expedition caught picture of a gelatinous creature a in a recent dive to “the Java Trench, the bottommost part of the Indian Ocean.”
It is probably a new creature, as there are no creatures such as this, as it was living over 6,500 meters (21,300 feet) below sea level.
They call it a balloon on a string, and it is most probably a jellyfish.
"This creature likely anchors itself to the seafloor with its long tentacle, perhaps to keep still in a seismically active seafloor, Alan Jamieson, the chief scientist on the expedition and a senior lecturer at Newcastle University said. As for why the tentacle is so long, Jamieson suggested it might help the creature filter feed up to 3.3 feet (1 meter) above the seafloor."
The Okeanos Explorer’s recent expeditions in the central Pacific have also identified deep sea creatures, for instance a creature, called a sea toad or coffinfish (Chaunacops), was bright red.
And then, ghost octopus, and a and a jellyfish the incredible deep sea creatures.
Louis Armstrong recorded the song What a Wonderful World in 1967, and it now seems that the world is even more wonderful than we could have imagined.
As the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes puts it, “He has made everything beautiful in its time” (3:11, NIV).
Source:
Saplakoglu, Yasemin. 2019, A Living 'Balloon on a String' Discovered in the Deepest Part of the Indian Ocean. Live Science (18 April).
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