A
fisherman in waters north of New Zealand came across an
odd-looking,
translucent sea creature swimming on the surface.
Curious,
he caught the creature presumably scooping it up
with
a net to get a closerlook.
It
was described as a see-through, shrimp-like creature by the U.K. MailOnline.
“It
felt scaly and was quite firm, almost jelly like, and you couldn’t see
anything
inside aside from this orange little blob inside it,” fisherman
Stewart
Fraser told MailOnline.
Fraser,
who had been fishing with sons Conaugh and Finn
43
miles north of the Karikari Peninsula, took photos and
shared
them with his fishing buddies, none of whom could
identify the sea creature.“We have no idea
what it could have been,
but
it was quite something, and I’d never seen anything like it before,
”
he said.
Fortunately,
the folks at the National Marine Aquarium in Plymouth, U.K.,
had an idea, identifying it as a Salpa
maggiore (Salpa maxima).
Paul
Cox, director of conservation and communication at the aquarium,
told
MailOnline that a salp is barrel-shaped, moves by pumping water
through
its gelatinous body, and that the life-cycle includes alternate
generations
of existing as solitary individuals or as a group forming long
chains.
“In
common with other defenseless animals that occupy open
water
jellies and hydroids, for example—the translucence presumably
provides some protection from predation,” Cox
told MailOnline.
“Being see-through is a pretty good camouflage
in water.”
The
report doesn’t say, but it is presumed Fraser threw the
bizarre
sea creature back into the ocean.
