Trying to ID this Jelly

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dwashbur

Contributor
Messages
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Location
Seattle, WA
# of dives
200 - 499
Found this little guy swooshing along in the water column at about 12 feet at Point Lobos yesterday. He was maybe an inch long not counting the tentacles. I've been through Wrobel/Mills and a couple of other books and can't seem to find him. Anybody got an idea? Pelagics aren't really my strong suit to begin with, and this one has me stumped.

In the interest of full disclosure, the third picture has been color-adjusted a bit. Other than that, the pix haven't been altered except to remove a little backscatter in the empty space around him. There was a pretty good layer of yuck in the cove between about 10 and 15 fsw...

jelly1.jpg

jelly2.jpg

jelly3.jpg
 
Maybe it's something that hitched a ride in a cruise ship bilge, or got caught in an upwelling from the deep canyon. OR.....

[Dum Dum DUMMMMMMMMMM]

Could it have fallen from SPACE???

:11:
 
The internal structure is way different.

That was what I thought, but as I said, I'm out of my element with these guys. I actually found a second one, not more than a quarter of an inch long, but couldn't get a picture of him. So, any other ideas?
 
I emailed the picture to one of our jelly gurus and got this response back:

This one belongs the genus Polyorchus which translates from Latin to “many testicles.” The long crème colored things in the center are the gonads. I think it could be a small Polyorchus haplus, although I’d need to have the specimen in hand to be sure.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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