July 2, 2021: Jellyfish
Image courtesy of NOAA/UAF/Oceaneering. Download larger version (jpg, 720 KB).
You don’t have to travel to outer space on World UFO Day — we’ve got plenty of otherworldly beings right here on Earth!
This jelly, Aegina citrea, was seen during the Gulf of Alaska Seamounts 2019 expedition. It is a narcomedusa, which is a group of jellies that (mostly) specialize in eating other jellies as prey.
The reddish-looking hitchhiker clinging to the jelly’s bell in the image is a crustacean known as a hyperiid amphipod. Many species of hyperiid amphipods follow a parasitic way of life, living a benthic (bottom-dwelling) existence, even as they float in the plankton, due to their use of jellyfish as habitat.
From: Introducing: Jellies!.