Giant jellyfish found in New Guinea, scientists believe it’s a new species

Diver Dorian Borcherds filmed an unusual jellyfish he encountered off the coast of Papua New Guinea. Presumably, this kind of science is not known.

He says that he only met jellyfish 3-4 times during his dives for 20 years. This meeting amazed the man, so Dorian tried to examine the jellyfish in the smallest detail and, of course, captured it on video. The diver describes it like this:

“The jellyfish has unusual markings. It’s a little bigger than a soccer ball and swims pretty fast.”

Eager to find out who he met, Dorian sent the video to his wife in South Africa, who uploaded it to the Jellyfish app, a project co-founded by Dr. Lisa-Anne Gershwin, a jellyfish expert with Australian Marine Stinger Advisory Services. She called back literally half an hour later and suggested that the same jellyfish was caught in 1997 on the Great Barrier Reef. Scientists then studied a new species and named it Chirodectes maculatus. However, upon careful comparison of the archived and real video, it turned out that the diver nevertheless filmed a completely new species, unknown to science.

However, it is too early to draw conclusions The Guardian. Professor Kylie Pitt of Griffith University admits that this is a new species, but would like more confirmation of this:

“It would be great if we could get a sample and be able to describe its morphology in combination with genetic testing.”

Previously, our publication talked about the danger purple jellyfish.

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