Rare photo captures extraordinary moment in the sea: 'Beautiful'
This surreal sight, recently captured by rangers from the National Park of American Samoa, is believed to be a floating egg mass laid by a diamondback squid (Thysanoteuthis rhombus) — a large, deep-sea species rarely seen in the act of reproduction.
"Each tiny pink dot is a developing embryo," the National Park wrote in its post. "A rare and beautiful reminder of the ocean's wonders." The remarkable images caught the attention of marine experts in Australia, who confirmed the species and shed light on just how unique these sightings are, even in tropical waters.
While these photos were taken in Polynesian waters, diamondback squid are also found in Australia.
"This large-sized oceanic squid — over 20 kilograms when mature — is distributed globally in tropical and subtropical zones," Dr Wen-Sung Chung, a marine scientist at the University of Queensland, told Yahoo News Australia. "It attracts fisheries interest in several East Asian countries due to its high market price."
Dr Chung confirmed the gelatinous ribbon was the egg mass of the diamondback squid, adding that several oceanic squid species produce similar floating structures. "These large, jelly-like egg masses can contain hundreds of thousands of eggs," he said.
Incredible photos capture rare moment off Aussie coast
Veteran diver devastated over grim Great Barrier Reef report
Incredible event 'triggered by full moon' off famous coast
"Most hatchlings are only one to two millimetres long and are known as paralarvae, which drift with the current. I haven't seen its egg mass on the Oz coast yet," he added, "but I have indeed seen them repeatedly in Taiwan."
Dr Mandy Beasley, from the National Marine Science Centre at Southern Cross University, said the sighting is consistent with the known behaviour of the species. "This oceanic species does occur in Australian waters and is known to have floating egg masses that have been observed also in the Philippines," she told Yahoo.
Dr John Healy, curator of malacology at the Queensland Museum, said the egg mass pictured in Samoa is "well over a metre in length" and likely attracted the nearby fish shown in the images. "They may be trying to eat some of the eggs or simply be curious about the mass," he told Yahoo.
"The species occurs circumglobally, mainly in tropical and subtropical waters, and certainly in Australian waters — but mostly in pairs or as individuals," he said. "The Queensland Museum has a specimen on display that was fished off the beach at the northern end of Moreton Island in 2010 and donated to our collection."
Though the diamondback squid is commercially fished in Japan and parts of Southeast Asia, it's not targeted in Australia. Still, experts say sightings like this — even overseas — help shed light on the mysterious deep-sea lives of oceanic squid and the fragile, fleeting structures they leave behind.
Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
10 bizarre 'dark voids' appear in the skies over uninhabited island near Antarctica — Earth from space
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. QUICK FACTS Where is it? Heard Island, Indian Ocean [-53.116414344, 73.51793263] What's in the photo? An unusual stream of von Kármán vortices trailing off a hidden peak Which satellite took the photo? Landsat 8 When was it taken? May 3, 2016 This striking satellite photo shows 10 swirling "dark voids" that appeared above an uninhabited volcanic island in the Indian Ocean. The black spots are the result of atmospheric cloud vortices, but are oddly pronounced and significantly contorted compared to most other examples of this phenomenon. The spinning voids are trailing off Heard Island — an uninhabited Australian territory in the southern Indian Ocean, around 900 miles (1,500 kilometers) north of Antarctica. The cloud-obscured landmass has a surface area of around 142 square miles (368 square kilometers). On average, the dark spots are around 8 miles (13 km) wide, decreasing slightly in size the further they have traveled, according to NASA's Earth Observatory. They are initially moving away from the island in a northeasterly direction (left to right). The spinning holes are the result of a phenomenon known as von Kármán vortices, which occur when a prevailing wind encounters a landmass, disturbing the airflow and creating "a double row of vortices which alternate their direction of rotation," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They are named for Theodore von Kármán, a Hungarian-American physicist, who was the first to describe this natural phenomenon. In this case, the vortices are being created by Mawson Peak, a 9,000-foot-tall (2,700 meters) active volcano sat at the heart of Heard Island. Related: See all the best images of Earth from space Normally, von Kármán vortices create long trails of swirling clouds that get caught up in the disrupted air flows. The cloud streams are normally perfectly straight, such as a series of parallel vortex streams that emerged side-by-side off the Atlantic coast of Africa in 2015 (see above). But in this case, the vortex stream appears to bend almost 90 degrees midway through the stream. This change in direction was most likely caused by a sporadic burst of the intense westerly winds that frequently blow across the area around Heard Island at speeds over 50 mph (80km/h), known as the "Furious Fifties," according to the Earth Observatory. In most examples of von Kármán vortices, the resulting cloud trails can be quite wispy, tracing out the subtle variations in the invisible air currents, such as examples observed over Mexico's Guadalupe Island in 2012 and above Svalbard's Bear Island in 2023. MORE EARTH FROM SPACE —Gravity waves spark pair of perfect cloud ripples above uninhabited islands —Mysterious, slow-spinning cloud 'cyclone' hugs the Iberian coast —Giant, near-perfect cloud ring appears in the middle of the Pacific Ocean However, in this photo, the wispy trails are replaced by a string of concentrated holes, or gaps, within the clouds. This is probably due to exceptionally thick cloud coverage, which can be disrupted only at the heart of each spinning section within the vortex stream. Mawson Peak is smaller than most of the peaks that regularly produce von Kármán vortices, making it slightly rarer for the cloud swirls to emerge there. However, Heard Island has produced more traditional vortex streams in the past, such as one showing in November 2015. Solve the daily Crossword
CNN
14 hours ago
- CNN
Scientists say they cruised the ocean in a deep-sea submersible and came across an undiscovered ecosystem
FacebookTweetLink Marine researchers exploring extreme depths say they have discovered an astonishing deep-sea ecosystem of chemosynthetic life that's fueled by gases escaping from fractures in the ocean bed. The expedition revealed methane-producing microbes and marine invertebrates that make their home in unforgiving conditions where the sun's rays don't reach, according to a new study. Geochemist Mengran Du had 30 minutes left in her submersible mission when she decided to explore one last stretch of the trenches that lie between Russia and Alaska, about 5,800 to 9,500 meters (19,000 to 30,000 feet) below the ocean's surface in what's called the hadal zone. She said she began to notice 'amazing creatures,' including various species of clam and tube worm that had never been recorded so deep below the surface. What Du stumbled upon was a roughly 2,500-kilometer (1,550-mile) stretch of what her team says is the deepest known ecosystem of organisms that use the chemical compound methane instead of sunlight to survive. Du is a co-lead author of a study describing the findings that was published July 30 in the journal Nature. The hadal zone is primarily comprised of oceanic trenches and troughs — some of the deepest and least explored environments on Earth. At these depths, 'life needs tricks to survive and thrive there,' explained Du, a professor and researcher at the Institute of Deep-sea Science and Engineering at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. One of those tricks lies in bacteria that have evolved to live inside the clams and tube worms, according to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration. The bacteria convert methane and hydrogen sulfide from cold seeps — cracks in the seafloor that leak these compounds as fluids — into energy and food that the host animal can use, allowing organisms to live in zero-sunlight conditions. The discovery suggests that these communities might also exist in other hadal trenches, Du said, opening opportunities for further research into just how deep these animals can survive. After analyzing sediment samples collected from the expedition, Du and her team said they detected high concentrations of methane. The find was surprising, since deep-sea sediments normally contain very low concentrations of the compound. The scientists hypothesized that microbes living in the ecosystem convert organic matter in the sediments into carbon dioxide, and carbon dioxide into methane — something the researchers didn't know microbes could do. The bacteria living inside clam and tube worm species then use this methane for chemosynthesis to survive, Du said. There was another revelation, too. Scientists previously thought chemosynthetic communities relied on organic matter — such as from dead organisms and drifting particles from living species — that fell from the ocean's surface to the floor. But this discovery, Du said, reveals that these methane-producing microbes are also creating a local source of organic molecules that larger organisms such as clams can use for food and energy. Methane, as a carbon-containing compound, is part of the carbon cycle. So, this discovery also indicates that the hadal trenches play a more important role in that cycle than previously thought, Du explained. Scientists have long understood that methane is stored as compressed fluid deep in the subduction zone, where tectonic plates meet below the ocean floor, which ultimately releases through 'cold seeps' at the bottom of hadal trenches. Now that Du's team has discovered chemosynthesis at such depths, they hypothesize that the hadal trenches act not only as reservoirs, but also as recycling centers for methane. This suggests, Du said, that 'a large amount of the carbon stays in the sediments and (is) recycled by the microorganisms.' Indeed, scientists have recently estimated that hadal zone sediments could sequester as much as 70 times more organic carbon than the surrounding seafloor. These so-called carbon sinks are crucial for our planet given that methane and carbon dioxide are two major greenhouse gases driving global warming in the atmosphere. Chemosynthetic communities themselves are not new to science. Previous research has hinted that it was possible for them to thrive at such great depths, said Johanna Weston, a deep ocean ecologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts who was not involved with the new study. She was impressed, however, with the extent of the recent discovery, she told CNN. In an age of widespread biodiversity loss, the finding highlights the importance of new technology that can withstand high pressure in deep-sea environments to document undiscovered organisms, said Weston, who is part of a team actively exploring the deep-sea offshore from Argentina. Even though the hadal trenches are remote, they aren't completely isolated, she added. Weston and her colleagues discovered a newfound species in 2020 in the Mariana Trench named Eurythenes plasticus for the microplastic fibers detected in its gut. And near Puerto Rico, Weston newly identified an isopod that exclusively eats sargassum, a type of abundant seaweed in the Atlantic Ocean that can sink to the ocean floor in just 40 hours. 'The deep ocean is very connected to what's happening on the surface,' she said. Research on deep-sea ecosystems is only a few decades old, and the technology for new discoveries is improving. But Du added that it's important for different countries and scientific disciplines to collaborate on future efforts. The Global Hadal Exploration Program, which is co-led by UNESCO and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, aims to do just that by creating a network of deep-sea scientists from multiple countries. Du hopes she and her team can learn more about hadal trench ecosystems by studying how these species have adapted to such extreme depths. 'Even though we see the hadal trench as a very extreme environment, the most inhospitable environment … (chemosynthetic organisms) can live happily there,' Du said. Sign up for CNN's Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
Yahoo
15 hours ago
- Yahoo
Incredible predator discovery inside remote Aussie island cave with no public access
Deep in a cave on an island off Australia's remote Pilbara, a venomous arachnid has quietly evolved over millions of years to attack and kill prey in the dark. The creatures are a type of pseudoscorpion that was previously unknown to science and have only been found in one place on Barrow Island. Samples of the tiny animals were first collected 35 years ago and then placed in a vault at the Western Australian Museum, but they were not officially described until this month. Like all pseudoscorpions, they superficially resemble scorpions, but they lack an elongated tail with a stinger, and instead attack using venom glands in their long, pincer-like fingers. Dr Mark Harvey co-authored a description of this new species, Anatemnus capillatus, in the Australian Journal of Taxonomy. No one has ever seen it alive in its natural environment, but clues to its behaviour can be found by studying similar species. 'All pseudoscorpions are predators… They walk around sensing their environment with specialised hairs, and as soon as they find prey, they'll grip it and inject venom into it so it quickly dies. Then they'll suck all the fluids out of it, which is the standard way arachnids feed,' Harvey told Yahoo News Australia. Incredible facts about Barrow Island There is no public access to Barrow Island as it is listed as a Class A Nature Reserve. It is home to 24 species and subspecies found nowhere else on Earth. Barrow Island is home to Boodie Cave, which is one of Australia's oldest archaeological sites and contains evidence of humans from 46,200 to 51,100 years ago. US energy giant Chevron was permitted to build its $54 billion Greater Gorgon gas extraction project on the island. How pseudoscorpions evolved inside caves The newly discovered Anatemnus capillatus are just two to three millimetres long, making them an average-sized pseudoscorpion. It was one of two new species described by the team at the Western Australian Museum. The other, Anatemnus eminus, was collected from multiple underground locations back on the mainland of the Pilbara in 2015 and 2018. The Pilbara was once covered in temperate forests, but just over two million years ago, they began to dry out into the deserts we see today. Animals that inhabited these landscapes either died off or changed. As the region became arid, the pseudoscorpions moved underground, and they evolved to look markedly different from their forest-dwelling cousins. Both newly described species are pale in colour and have long appendages to help them navigate their moist, dark environment. 'There's absolutely no light down there whatsoever, so they're just feeling around, sensing prey, and trying not to be eaten themselves,' Harvey said. Incredible and 'rare' phenomenon on rugged Aussie beach vanishes within 24 hours Signs of million-year-old ancient humans found on Australia's doorstep Solution to Great Barrier Reef problem as new report released Noting the pseudoscorpions were collected 'half a lifetime ago', Harvey concedes it can be a 'slow task' to describe a new species. He estimates there are 4,000 species of subterranean invertebrates living across the Pilbara, but only around a quarter have been described. 'Places like the Western Australian Museum have thousands of undescribed species of invertebrates sitting on shelves, and it's just a matter of prioritising which ones we work on,' he said. Harvey is a Western Australian Museum associate and is its former Head of Terrestrial Zoology. Love Australia's weird and wonderful environment? 🐊🦘😳 Get our new newsletter showcasing the week's best stories.
