Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Seafloor-Skimming Jellyfish


Photograph courtesy David Shale

A potentially new species of deep-sea jellyfish tripped the light fantastic for researchers during their recent MAR-ECO expedition to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
"This is a special kind [of trachymedusa jellyfish] which, instead of floating around in the middle of the ocean"—as most jellyfish do—"floats just centimeters above the bottom, with its tentacles touching the seafloor," team member Monty Priede said. "This is a very unusual thing."

nationalgeographic.com

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