Rare photo captures extraordinary moment in the sea: 'Beautiful'
At first glance, it looks like a drifting ribbon of jelly. But look closer, and you'll see something extraordinary — a translucent spiral floating just below the surface, dotted with hundreds of thousands of tiny pink embryos.
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.
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"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.
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