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When diver Dorian Borcherds turned on his video camera off the coast of Papua New Guinea, he was pierced by the giant translucent mass that swayed beside him.
What it captured in the depths has fascinated marine biologists, who are determining whether the rare jellyfish is a new species.
According to British media, the jellyfish may be the same jellyfish officially seen only once before off the coast of Far North Queensland, a quarter of a century ago.
The rare jellyfish was filmed by a diver in December off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The finding at sea
Borcherds, owner of a dive company, was diving with a client in December when he spotted the strange creature and described it on social media. “I saw a new kind of jellyfish while diving. It has nice markings and is a little bigger than a soccer ball and swims pretty fast“, he wrote at the time.
The diver uploaded the images to an app and within half an hour had an excited jellyfish expert on the phone from Tasmania.
It was Lisa-ann Gershwin of the Australian Marine Sting Advisory Service, who at first thought it was the same jellyfish seen on the Great Barrier Reef in May 1997, the site reports. 20 minutes. “I was completely blown away when the photos were sent to me,” said Gershwin.
Scientists now have to determine if it is a new species.
“I thought, oh my god, what is this and where is it? This species had only been seen once on the Great Barrier Reef in the 1990s. “
Scientists initially described the species as Chiropsalmus. Dr Gershwin said she published another article on the organism’s classification a year later and officially moved it to the genus Chirodectes, where it was accepted.
After reviewing the video, Dr. Gershwin worked closely with the Queensland Museum in Brisbane, where the original Queensland specimen was kept.
“They sent me the video and I was able to watch it frame by frame,” said Gershwin.
“We compared the two separate jellyfish and came to the conclusion that the one shot in Papua New Guinea [por Borcherds] is a new unknown species.
“I called Dorian and said: ‘Are you sitting?’ And when I told him I thought it was a new species, he got really excited. “
Other jellyfish specialists say it could be a new species, but I don’t think it’s possible to know for sure based on video alone. To be sure they would need to see it live. “It would be great if we could get the sample and be able to describe its morphology, along with the genetic tests,” they argue.
A new species?
Although Dr Gershwin is convinced that it is a new species, she has not yet presented her findings in a peer review paper.
“A new species is considered a hypothesis, it needs to be tested,” he said, according to Australian ABC. “Technically it is not discovered until it is formally named and classified. “
“I’ve been very meticulous since I’ve been involved in the reclassification of the original species, so I want to be more than fair, I’m crossing every t by pointing every i ‘.”
“Furthermore, we still have the mystery of where the Great Barrier Reef specimen came from.”
Source: Clarin
