Scientists believe a bright purple jellyfish covered in tiny mouths that
has washed up on a beach in Queensland, Australia, could be an
undiscovered species. The extraordinary color of the creature has
baffled marine experts, who are now trying to determine the species,
which sadly died during analysis.
"It's straight out of science fiction," said
marine biologist Dr Lisa Gershwin. "It's an electric, vibrant, ‘wow’
purple." She said the tentacles, or oral arms, were about a meter long
and covered in microscopic mouths. Lifeguards on the sunshine coast
found the jellyfish at Coolum beach on Wednesday morning and handed it
over to scientists at nearby Underwater World.
Gershwin believed the jellyfish could be a thysanostoma, but said the
species was normally brown or beige. "It begs the question, if it's such
a vibrant, different color, what other features does it have?"
Gershwin, from the CSIRO marine and atmospheric research center, said.
The plot thickened on Thursday, with pictures emerging of a second
specimen from Ballina in northern New South Wales.
Dr Gershwin said it was possible the jellyfish had arrived in Australia
in the ballast of a ship.
If it is a species known as a thysanostoma, it could have come from the
Red Sea, Malaysia or the Philippines.
``The reason we haven’t been able to progress this is because the
literature is in German and from the 1800s,’’ she said. ``No work has
been done on this since then.
I’m getting the papers translated by a native German speaker.
We need to find out if it’s new to science
and, if it is, why it hasn’t been seen before.
If it’s not from here, we need to work out where it came from and how it got here.’’
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