Scientists Just Filmed One of the Deep Sea’s Creepiest Creatures for the First Time in This Part of the Pacific
· Vice
The deep sea is filled with all manner of creepy little guys, ones that look like they’re from an entirely different universe with different rules. This is best summed up by recently released footage of a rare encounter with one of the ocean’s creepiest critters: a Magnapinna squid, whose recent sighting marks the first confirmed sighting of this creature in the Northeastern Pacific Ocean.
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Researchers from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, or MBARI, who spoke to IFLScience, accidentally bumped into this floating alien-looking freak hovering 10,751 feet below the surface near California’s Davidson Seamount. They weren’t even looking for it. They were actually tracking beaked whale feeding trails when the four-foot-long creature (that will absolutely be used as a model for an alien species in a science-fiction movie one day) bobbed into view.
Scientists Captured Rare Footage of a Deep-Sea Squid We Barely Understand
It’s an eerie sight, what with its softly flapping fins slowly propelling itself forward as its wispy tendrils drag behind, but it is undeniably beautiful. The Magnapinna’s appendages that taper into filaments bend at sharp 90-degree angles, creating what looks like an elbow. Adding angularity to it, something you don’t really see in nature too often, making it look a bit like a baby’s crib mobile.
Researchers don’t know much about it, as we’ve recorded only around 70 sightings of them. We don’t know what they eat, how they mate, or whether they’re actually rare or just good at hiding. Habitat models suggest they could inhabit up to 70 percent of the total volume of our oceans and may be pretty good at staying unseen and mostly unknown.
All we know is that these eerie little guys thrive in the darkness of the deep sea, and given how rarely we spot them, it may be a while before we learn much more than that about them.
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