goodmorningpapua.com – A diver off the coast of Papua New Guinea has captured a very rare box jellyfish. The video results are very sharp and also considered extraordinary. This is because this is the second time this species has been documented. These beautiful jellyfish have four groups of striped tentacles that follow the back of the translucent body. Its body has a unique motif, namely a ring around a bright red core. Its Latin name is Chirodectes maculatus.
“I saw this rare jellyfish while diving. The jellyfish has a very unique pattern. They’re a little bigger than a soccer ball, and they swim pretty fast,” reads the description shared on the Scuba Ventures channel.
Most box jellyfish are venomous to humans. In fact, some of them are highly toxic. However, this species is not yet known whether it is dangerous or not. The box jellyfish was first discovered in 2005 by a team of Australian scientists who caught the jellyfish in 1997 and preserved it.
The jellyfish was classified by other scientists a year later. Although it has been seen before, this rare jellyfish species has only been captured in the video twice. Moreover, the second video captured by the diver is of high quality and sharp. Allen Collins, a zoologist and curator of the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History, said the video showed similar but not identical characteristics to the previous description.
For example, a description from 2005 says the creature has spots, while the footage here shows rings. “I think there is always the possibility that this specimen belongs to a closely related but undescribed species of Chirodectes. Although, I am more inclined to Chirodectes maculatus,” he said. It is very unusual to find footage of this rare creature.
Even the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), which is a specialized research organization, rarely displays footage of never-before-seen creatures. Even when they do, the specimens tend to be quite small, like the deep sea jellyfish seen in April 2022.
The box jellyfish that was captured is also very large. The only recent comparable discovery by MBARI is a giant ghost jellyfish that was spotted last December, and has even been documented nine times before.