What was this?

Was at Santa Rosa Island off California the other day and I was hanging on the anchor line doing a safety stop after about an hour or so at 70 feet.

The water was somewhat dirty with flotsam and jetsam streaming past me quite fast. Out of the blue I see this critter that is about 8" tall with a few vestiges of small tentacles hanging down and pretty much completely see-through. It was motionless and just flew past me. The next one to come by I looked at closely. There was essentially no tissue to it like a jellyfish might have. There were faint small organg dots over the outer surface. Inside of it, there were four verticle quadrants, the outermost edges had a vertical row of biolumnescent dots that fires in rapid vertical sequence upwards, only to restart and cycle again at about 2 per second.

I decided to intercept the next one without grabbing it, so I put my open hand in position, and the next one that streamed by, when it hit my opened gloved hand, it shredded into a zillion pieces. Poor guy, didn't know that was going to happen.

I guessed it was a siphonophore, but someone on the boat said it was a "tinaphore" if that is even the correct spelling, although phonetically correct. I coulnd't find anything on the net using that spelling. I always thought these things were very deep.

Here is a link to something similar, but what I saw was not quite as pointy on top, and it had a shorter height to diamete aspect ratio:



Ideas?

If that was the Caribbean, I'd suggest a Comb Jellyfish like this one....

Could it have been some kind of a salp?

DrySuitDave once bubbled...

I guessed it was a siphonophore, but someone on the boat said it was a "tinaphore" if that is even the correct spelling, although phonetically correct. I coulnd't find anything on the net using that spelling. I always thought these things were very deep.

Ideas?

Click to expand...

Yes. It sounds like you saw a comb jelly, sometimes called a sea walnut or sea gooseberry (great description, BTW). They are members of the phylum Ctenophora (thus the "tinaphore"). My info says that only one species is known to have nematocysts (the stinging cells that make jellyfish such a hazard). Comb jellies are very common in some areas - there are shallow water and benthic species as well as deep-water ones. Didn't realize they were so fragile that they's disintegrate from brushing up against a glove, though :-(.

Siphonophores (the best known is probably the Portugese Man O' War) are hydrozoans, which makes them part of the same phylum (Cnidaria) as the jellyfish (and thus can be loaded with nematocysts!). It's possible it was one - might want to look at some pictures before you decide if it was you or the person on the boat who guessed correctly.
The salps (phylum Urochordata) mentioned by kelpmermaid lack the 4/8-fold vertical symmetry you describe and at any rate shouldn't be so wimpy (three tissue layers, structural muscle and the presence of a fairly durable outer layer).

<end invertebrate zoology lecture mode>
Phew. I'm including the terminology here so that you can look up pictures a bit more easily on the web but if I get too caught up in the technical stuff, please feel free to administer verbal whack with clue stick.

http://www.biosis.org/zrdocs/zoolinfo/grp_coel.htm#Ctenophora may help - it lists links on things that go squish in the dive cat

All you are the bomb. The links you provided sure steered me right. The Carribean link looked very close, it just lacked the faint orange non-bioluminescent dots over the outer body.

You know, I have been diving for 30 years (started at 13) and this stuff fascinates me. Most divers I know would dive in mud just to get undersomething, but now it takes a rebreather for me...

I don't know why most divers pass this stuff up, the little creatures that is. I have been in places where I wish I had a magnifying glass, there can be just so much to see when staring closely at encrusting stuff.


It seems as if so many are into seeing Mister Big, but little creatures that look like they are out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the movie The Abyss are what fascinates me.

Thanks everyone

DrySuitDave once bubbled...
It seems as if so many are into seeing Mister Big, but little creatures that look like they are out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind or the movie The Abyss are what fascinates me.

Click to expand...

Ditto to that. I spent about eight weeks underwater on an expedition to Barbados surveying reefs. After a while, you get so engrossed in the small stuff, you forget all about the fish! Tunicates are also a personal favourite.

The Ctenophores are a really interesting bunch though. Very old (600 million years? - it's been some time since my degree). Broke off before the Bilateria, I think. And they do bioluminesce in the dark too, although the light refracted through the cilia produce the best colours...

Can anybody verify if these little guys were the inspiration for the aliens in the movie The Abyss ? Just curious.

- eric

I find myself looking a lot at the small stuff too, especially during safty stops or when my buddy is going too slow. There are a lot of weird things out there that are so often overlooked by divers

A little known fact:
" 90% of all living organisms live in or under the sea."
Q.What does this say about the land where most people live and see wildlife like birds or deer?
A. This is only where 10% of living organisms are seen.

Dive Safe,
Caymaniac