Dozens of otherworldly new deep-sea critters discovered including glowing jellyfish and a glass squid

The ocean’s hiding some deep secrets.An oceanic expedition off Brazil has discovered 31 otherworldly new critters, including ghostly invertebrates, animals living inside their own bodily fluids and other creatures seemingly better suited to deep space than the deep blue sea.“The largest habitat on Earth, the midwater, is filled with incredible animals we are only just starting to understand,” said the expedition leader, Dr.Karen Osborn of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in a statement.The international team of researchers, who were stationed aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor (too), happened upon the marine menagerie while surveying the tropical South Atlantic Ocean.They were specifically investigating the midwater — the segment of ocean situated between the sunlit layer and the ocean floor, which is Earth’s “largest and least explored habitable ecosystem,” per the survey.Using advanced imaging systems and genome sequences, they were able to confirm and describe the aforementioned dozens of denizens of this aquatic lost world.Finds included ghostly gossamer worms, comb jellies that propel themselves along with glittering appendages, and single-celled organisms that were paradoxically big enough to see with the naked eye, Science Alert reported.The team also discovered siphonophores, colonial organisms related to jellyfish and corals, and tadpole-like critters called larvaceans that erect houses from mucus and are more closely related to humans than invertebrates.

Also present in this remote environment, which is one of Earth’s least understood ecosystems to its volume and inaccessibility, were some familiar faces: a translucent glass squid and a pelagic octopus consuming a bright red sea jelly.“I continue to be fascinated by the fantastic variety of solutions they have evolved to survive in this formidable environment,” Osborn gushed.These miraculous finds were a credit to state of the art tech that...