The ocean is magical. It’s also really vast and scary and shockingly uncharted. But we’re going to focus on the ‘magical’ part — like this crazy glowing jellyfish everyone is swooning about.
Look at that thing: It has long tentacles that can extend straight out from the center bell, making it look at times like an alien beacon or a missing part to a spaceship from another galaxy.
Scientists on NOAA’s Okeanos Explorer Vessel caught video of this creature in April near the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the ocean. It was hanging out about 12,000 feet (3700 m) below the water’s surface. (That’s far above the 13,000 – 20,000 feet abyssal zone where no light reaches and even more wild and terrifying creatures lurk.)
NOAA has identified it as a hydromedusa, which is an excellent classification. It does look very “Medusal,” if the mythological villain also glowed from the inside.
The original video of the creature was shared almost 10,000 times from the NOAA Office of Exploration and Research Facebook page. Fans of the video have been trying to think of exactly WHAT this luminescent Hydromedusa looks like. They described it a “deep sea firefly,” “an alien, plain and simple” and “bad 90’s computer graphics.”
