Dive Into Your Imagination

Comb jellies are perhaps some of the coolest looking creatures and look like the underwater aliens from the movie, The Abyss! Although they look like jellyfish, they do not have stinging cells. As a matter of fact, jellyfish and sea turtles suck up ctenophores and eat them!

Comb jellies are in the ctenophore family and almost all 150 types spend their time in the plankton biomass worldwide. They are gelatinous and very difficult to research and study so we do not know a lot about their lifespan. Although it appears that they bioluminesc, they are diffracting light as they beat their comb rows. They are amazing animals to watch move. Look closely and you will see plankton in their feeding tube. Even though they have the ability to move with their eight comb rows, ocean currents, tides and waves control where these animals drift.

BLUE OCEAN TIP: The phytoplankton biomass is responsible for nearly ¾ of the oxygen of our planet and the zooplankton biomass is the baseline of food in our oceans. Increased efforts are looking at the relationship between climate change and ocean productivity in relationship to the marine algae physiological ecology and carbon cycling.



 

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