What's this BIZARRE animal?

[The Publisher]

An exact ID is way beyond my ken, but I'd bet on a opisthobranch in the suborder Gymnosomata. That'd make it a "Sea angel", also known as a clione, and previously known as a pteropod, which are a group of small swimming sea slugs.

Um... yeah, what he said!


There are so many things in the sea I never knew existed, and a Sea Angel is one of them. What a magnificent critter pictured below, whose author I cannot find to give credit to other than a screen name of bogleech.

[thalassamania]

There are so many things in the sea I never knew existed, and a Sea Angel is one of them. What a magnificent critter pictured below, whose author I cannot find to give credit to other than a screen name of bogleech.

That Horned Clione shot was taken, I believe, by either Ron Gilmer or Richard Harbison of Woods Hole Oceanographic during a cruise aboard the R/V Endeavor that I made with them back in the mid 1980s. We left Iceland, skirted Greenland, put in to St. John's and would up back at the Hole on the same day that Ballard came back from his first Titanic expedition (it was a real circus that day). Anyway, while it looks like a tropical baby, that sucker is from the arctic.

More Clione pics here.

[Sarah]

The diver who shot the original video is here now, let's see if the still photo matches what he remembers he saw and shot.

[The Publisher]

The more I look at the original video compared to the followup photos, the less I am convinced it is a clione.

I noticed a lack of an orange visceral sack that is consistent with all other videos and photos of a clione. I also noticed that the locomotive wings on the cliones are anterior, whereas the original video the undulating wing is medial, and it appears dorsal rather than bilateral.

Thoughts?

[SeaDragons]

Hi folks!

I am the one that shot the video. It definitely did not look like a clione, as others have said. I was thinking squid before seeing the end folded over on itself and I never did see any separation where the tentacles would be. The single "dorsal" fin also has me stumped.

Thanks for the interest! I'll keep looking and let you all know if I find out anything.

Mike

[thalassamania]

Hi folks!

I am the one that shot the video. It definitely did not look like a clione, as others have said. I was thinking squid before seeing the end folded over on itself and I never did see any separation where the tentacles would be. The single "dorsal" fin also has me stumped.

Thanks for the interest! I'll keep looking and let you all know if I find out anything.

Mike

As I said, I'm really not sure, but please do not let the lack of direct comparison to the arctic specimens that are all we have to look at (stills and the Japanese vide) dissuade you, they are all either Clione anatarcticus or Clione limnacina. It is possible that this is the only footage of this animal. I can not even find photographs of the other species known, but I will continue to search.

I can not believe that it is a squid (which was my first guess also), the single dorsal discounts that possibility.

[The Publisher]

Mike aka SeaDragon, maybe you get to name a newly discovered species!

Clione masloskii