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A team of researchers spent nearly four months aboard the Nautilus exploration ship, looking for everything in the Pacific Ocean, from wrecks to meteorites.
But even these seasoned professionals could not help but be amazed by the strange and wonderful mouth of an eel that recently took a picture.
Credit: E / V Nautilus
Plunged beneath the surface of the sea, this weird fish, also known as the Pelican Eel or Umbrella Mouth, has jaws that swell and collapse like a balloon.
The researchers captured images of the strange character while he was swimming through the Papahānaumokuākea National Marine Monument in the North Pacific Ocean.
See all best photos of the week in these slideshows
The inflatable eel mouth deploys quickly in a massive bag that can capture larger prey. Then, in a flash, he deflates almost to nothing. As you can hear in the video above, this strange process was a shock to the Nautilus E / V team. "It's a fish? What?" a member of the expedition said. "It was great," added another.
According to the website of the expedition, this fish is probably only a youngster. Adults, he says, can reach lengths of up to 3 feet.
In June, E / V Nautilus helped a NASA scientist track down several small pieces of what could be a space rock that plunged into the sky in March. If this is confirmed, it will be the first time that meteorites will be recovered from the ocean. Although they can survive for millennia on earth, they can degrade in seawater.
This is the fourth annual expedition for the E / V Nautilus. This year, he has already explored the US margin of Cascadia, parts of southern California, Washington, the Northeast Pacific seamount, regions close to Canada and the waters around Hawaii. In October, the ship will float from Honolulu to San Francisco, before exploring Monterey Bay and finally the southern California border region.
Viewers can watch every step of the sea voyage online and even send questions to explorers on board via the Nautilus Live website.
In other marine animal news, staff at the Monterey Bay Aquarium recently captured images of a superpod of hundreds of dolphins rushing into the sea during a binge. "There are few more magical things in this world than hundreds of dolphins that cross the wild Monterey Bay on a foggy autumn morning," the aquarium said on Twitter.
Researchers probing the Atacama Trough recently discovered three new species of mollusks living about 5 miles below the surface. The scientist Thomas Linley said Newsweek he was "surprised" by the "incredible" discovery.
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