A pair of divers possessing an extreme skill set of underwater maneuvers and a decade’s worth of luck scored the ultimate rendezvous in the coastal depths of the UK, and they just happened to remember to bring a high definition underwater camera. The unusual meeting with the satellite-sized massive Barrel Jellyfish officially reached the level of code red viral, as a worldwide audience was given access to the breathtaking marine encounter.
As voracious plankton feeders, the massive barrel jellyfish species thrive in the cold waters of the North Atlantic and Irish sea, and are the primary food source for leatherback sea turtles, reports Fox News. Surprisingly, the cooler ocean temperatures do not deter the presence of an abundant and diverse submerged ecosystem, even though average highs in the Summer struggle to break the 63 degree mark off the rugged Cornwall coast.
The graceful marine creature was spotted near Falmouth, Cornwall
Ironically, the leviathan proportions of the Rhizostoma pulmo poses little threat to human swimmers except in the department of increasing the heart rate from the visual stimulation, while one of the most diminutive varieties of jellyfish on the planet, the Irukandji, is also the deadliest, and checking in with a body under a centimeter in size packs enough neurotoxin to incite a collective terror sweat at Australian beaches in proximity to the Great Barrier Reef.
While the still to be nicknamed ocean behemoth consists of polyps, eight primary tentacles and enough phosphorus to reinvent the ghastly apparition inhabiting the moors and striking fear among residents in the form of the new and improved “Elephant of the Baskervilles”, selected marine biologists hypothesize that this could have only been a juvenile. Suddenly, the true scale and size of the ocean’s wildlife is given a stirring reinfusion of perspective in a world dominated by the dimensions of a smartphone screen.
Read the Fox News story here.
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