New Species of Giant Jellyfish Found

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A new species of jellyfish with a yard-wide fleshy red bell and a cluster of wrinkled, thick arms has been found by scientists nearly a mile beneath the cold, dark waters of the Pacific Ocean.

Marine biologists at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute discovered 23 of what they call Big Reds in Monterey Bay and the Sea of Cortez and off Hawaii, Japan and the Farallon Islands near San Francisco, according to the latest online edition of the journal Marine Biology.

The only Big Red collected intact, a mere 8 inches wide, is being studied at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, said George Matsumoto, one of the biologists.

Right now, the life of Big Red is still unknown. Scientists don’t know what they eat, how they reproduce, or even if the ones they’ve seen are males or females.

But the biologists have used a remote-controlled submarine to get video images of the big jellyfish swimming and have collected tissue samples of the bell and the thick arms of one specimen. From the samples, scientists have concluded that Big Red is a unique species.

They named the new genus “Tiburonia” after the aquarium’s research vessel Tiburon, and the species “granrojo,” Spanish for big red.

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