Bizarre Tentacle-Trailing Rare Deep-Sea Creature Caught On Video Surprises Expedition Scientists
7 Researchers speculated that it could be a Solumbellula sea pen
At first, researchers thought they had seen a Solumbellula monocephalus, also called a Solumbellula sea pen. This type of animal belongs to the Cnidaria phylum, which also includes jellyfish, hydras, and coral. But before this, sea pens had only been seen in the Atlantic and Indian oceans, so it’s possible that the scientists might have found a new species.
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6 It was a fascinating discovery for the researchers
The sighting was “fascinating,” said Steve Auscavitch, who led the expedition and is a deep-sea biologist and post-doctoral scholar at Boston University. He stated- “From time to time, we come across something that we never expected to see, and those are often the most powerful observations.”
“We were nearing the end of our cruise and were at the bottom of the seafloor when we observed the two [sea pens]. The one we captured on video was massive, possibly the same size or larger than Hercules, our ROV. When I saw this amazing sea pen on video, I knew exactly what it could be,” he added.
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5 The creature was indeed a coral relative- a sea pen
To ascertain whether it was indeed a never-before-seen sea pen, Auscavitch sought confirmation from biologists on shore about what it was. They helped confirm his guess that it was a sea pen related to coral. Auscavitch guessed that the animal was pretty old based on how big it was, but he couldn’t say how old it exactly was. Sea pens reach adulthood at five or six years old and can live over a decade. He said, “Prior to this, Solumbellula monocephalus had never been seen in the central Pacific and never collected.”
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4 Two new groups of sea pens were recently named a few months before this discovery
Interestingly, his team’s discovery came a few months after scientists in Spain named two new groups of sea pens: Pseudumbellula and Solumbellula. The new species would be part of the Solumbellula group. These results were written up in the journal Invertebrate Systematics in February.
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