A new species of jellyfish swims off the Western Australian coast

Hungry predators of the sunless depths have long used the ghostly lights of bioluminescence to attract the unsuspecting. Angler fish, accomplished hunters with daggerlike teeth, wave lines tipped with glowing lures. Viper fish dangle long rods with luminous tips that can draw prey into their needlelike fangs.

Such feeding strategies appear to be rare among the gelatinous creatures of the deep. But now, off California, scientists have found a cousin of the jellyfish that boasts twitching, glowing red appendages that seem designed as lures. It is the first time researchers have found marine invertebrates that wield such red luminescence.

“It’s changing the way I see interactions in the ocean,” said Steven H.D. Haddock, a marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, California, and one of four scientists who discovered the new creature and its glow. The finding, Haddock added in an interview, is all the more surprising because scientists generally believe that deep-sea creatures cannot see red light ? a belief now under review. Of three examples of the new species that the team discovered, two had remnants of fish in their stomachs.

“Our findings,” the scientists wrote in a recent issue of the journal Science, suggest that the role of red and other long-wavelength lights in marine visual ecology merits a closer look.” In addition to Haddock, the scientists are Casey W. Dunn of Yale, Philip R. Pugh of the National Oceanography Center in Britain and Christine E. Schnitzler of the Monterey institute.

The deep ocean is home to swarms of gelatinous creatures, many boasting dazzling displays of bioluminescence, usually blue or green ? wavelengths that can travel long distances in water. Scientists have long theorised that the light is purely defensive in nature. For instance, startling brilliance is often seen among siphonophores, gelatinous colonial animals whose different members work in unison.

Some species found in areas teeming with life eat voraciously and grow up to 130 feet long, longer than blue whales. Such large siphonophores work passively like living drift nets, moving slowly along and reeling in krill and tiny fish.

Each animal has a cluster of swimming bells serving as a “head” and long elastic tentacles for fishing and drawing prey to waiting stomachs. From slender bodies, the animals can drag thousands of tentacles, stingers ready, and dozens of stomachs, each with fingerlike arms ready to grab captured prey. Such creatures, with no eyes, light up brightly when touched, and scientists believe that the strong illuminations may be intended to blind or frighten off predators.

William J. Broad / NYTNS