Our season in Antarctica aboard National Geographic Explorer is approaching, with our South Georgia & The Falklands expedition sailing out of Buenos Aires in just a few days. After that we’ll be crossing the Drake bound for the bottom of the planet. This year we’ll be sharing some of the discoveries our scientists and undersea specialists have made while exploring this region of the planet in a series of blog posts. David Cothran, our Undersea Specialist and Expedition Leader, will be filing the stories. If you’re curious about what kind of strange and wonderful discoveries have been made, take a look at some of David’s undersea photos shot over his years of exploring in Antarctica.
nice photo man thats a jellyfish right?
Hi Henry,
Sorry for the late response. That animal is not a jellyfish but a comb jelly. Jellyfish are all place in the Phylum (division of the Animal Kingdom) Cnidaria, along with their relatives the corals and anemones. The feature that distinguishes these animals is a special kind of stinging cell called a nematocyte, that they use to capture their prey (or sting swimmers!).
Comb jellies are placed in the Phylum Ctenophora. Many of them have tentacles, like the Cnidaria, but they are armed with sticky cells, called coloblasts, that capture their prey by gluing onto it, rather than stinging it.
This animal is the kind of Ctenophore called a Cydippid; it’s about six inches long. I photographed it in the Useful Islands, in the Bransfield Strait, off the Antarctic Peninsula. The really interesting thing about it is that you can clearly see an Antarctic krill (Euphausia superba), which is around two inches long, in its gut. Before I saw this I had no idea that ctenophores could take prey that large.
I’m glad that you like the shot. Stay tuned to the blog – I’ll be posting a series in the next few weeks about some of our discoveries in the Antarctic and elsewhere.
David