Laura is a science news writer, covering a wide variety of subjects, but she is particularly fascinated by all things aquatic, paleontology, nanotechnology, and exploring how science influences daily life. Laura is a proud former resident of the New Jersey shore, a competitive swimmer, and a fierce defender of the Oxford comma.
A Japanese and Brazilian team of scientists found a funky new jellyfish with a distinguishing mark. The St. George’s cross medusa is a new medusa jellyfish species that was found about 2,664 feet deep in the Pacific Ocean. It lives in a deep-sea volcanic structure called the Sumisu Caldera. This hot, hydrothermally active caldera is about six miles across and is located off the coast of Japan’s Ogasawara Islands, about 285 miles south of the capital city of Tokyo.
Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology Like all jellyfish, S. pagesi is transparent. It also eats other bioluminescent organisms in the deep sea that give off light. The team believes that its bright red stomach acts like a shield to hide its prey. This way, other organisms can’t see its meal after it has swallowed it. A rare find While new species are discovered and described all the time, this one was particularly rare.
Lindsay et. al. 2023. The specimen in the study was captured back in 2002 by the Remotely Operated Vehicle Hyperdolphin. The Sumisu Caldera can only be accessed through an ROV since it is so deep . Scientists didn’t see any other specimens until 2020. An ROV filmed, but didn’t collect, another jellyfish of the same species.