That Giant Dancing Baglike Jelly Thing…

Okay, so this deepwater enigma is no mystery: It’s actually a Deepstaria enigmatica, said oceanographer Steven Haddock.

“This bag-like jelly is not that rare, but is large, so rarely seen intact,” Haddock, a scientist for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Calif., wrote on his Facebook page “Jellywatch.”

“In the video, the swirling from the sub makes the medusa appear to undulate and it even turns inside-out … The web-like pattern is not a nerve net, as some comments have said. It is branches from their digestive system.”

This type of jellyfish is usually found in the south Atlantic Ocean; it has “oral arms […] terminating in curious hook-shaped organs.”

According to the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History, the strange species was first identified in 1966 — collected in a research submarine about half a mile deep in the Antarctic Ocean.

Loren Coleman About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct). Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015. Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.

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