#animallife

It's been a while so here's another deep-sea animal you've never heard of—the bottle comb jelly.

This species, Aulacoctena acuminate, was observed by our remotely operated vehicle Doc Ricketts at 1,146 meters (3,760 feet) deep. These comb jellies are ctenophores, not true jellies. Like other comb jellies, they navigate through the water by beating their shimmering, hair-like cilia.

MBARI researchers have learned that gelatinous animals like the bottle comb jelly have a large impact on deep-sea food webs. Our archive of nearly 28,000 hours of deep-sea video contains hundreds of observations of deep-sea animals feeding. Examining these observations in detail revealed that jellies, comb jellies, and siphonophores are important as both predators and prey in the ocean’s midnight zone.