Incredible ROV Footage of a Rare ‘Facehugger’ Jellyfish

While exploring the waters of the Kingman Reef in the remote Pacific, the ROV Hercules captured the movements of a mysterious jellyfish that resembled, at times, a Facehugger from Alien films. The crew learned later that this jelly had only been observed once before.

Our team was stumped when we encountered this mysterious gelatinous creature while diving on a previously unexplored guyot north-northwest of Kingman Reef. One of our experts initially guessed it could be a helmet jellyfish (with missing tentacles), but thanks to our expert, global Scientist Ashore network – connected to the ship via telepresence technologies – we have solved the mystery!

Dr. Dhugal Lindsay identified the jelly as an undescribed species of the Bathykorus order.

Midwater expert Dr. Dhugal Lindsay helped us to identify this jellyfish as a member of the order Narcomedusae, and an undescribed species within the genus Bathykorus. This is only the second encounter with this animal, first spotted by NOAA Ocean Exploration’s ship Okeanos Explorer in 2015.