Dive 15: Jellyfish
Video courtesy of the NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Windows to the Deep 2018. Download larger version (mp4, 14.9 MB).

This beautiful, big medusa belongs to the genus Cyanea, which is a group of scyphozoan jellyfishes well-known for their tendency to "bloom" and occur in large numbers in surface waters. They can also be a major food item for leatherback turtles. For many years it was thought that there were only a few, mostly cosmopolitan species, but we now know that many morphotypes are actually valid species in their own right.

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