San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Discovery shines light on deep-sea Monterey riches
The vast, largely unexplored waters of Monterey Bay have yielded a new prize: a coral-red jelly with tentacles as coiled and pink as pigtails.
Scientists who discovered the new species say it’s one example of perhaps millions of unknown creatures that inhabit the immensely biodiverse sea.
George Matsumoto, Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute senior education and research specialist and the lead author of a new paper on the discovery, described the new species, called Atolla reynoldsi, as “stunning.”
“Its tentacles are coiled when you first see it, like springs, which is very strange,” he told The Chronicle. “And then it has these things we call spiked ridges, which, if you look at them, look like part of a bicycle’s spoked wheel. And that’s very unusual.”
Up to 5 inches across, it’s bigger than other crown-shaped jellies. (Scientists prefer the term jelly or medusa over jellyfish, since they aren’t fish.) And it’s been found only in Monterey Bay, at depths of up to 10,463 feet, though it’s part of a genus of crown jellies called Atolla that are common worldwide. The Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, a partner of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, operates two research vessels out of Moss Landing, just north of Monterey. Using remotely operated vehicles and special tools to gather delicate specimens, it has discovered and named 225 species over 34 years.
But the institute has likely found as many more that have yet to be identified, said Matsumoto. That includes one jelly called the Red X, which is currently in a new exhibit at the Monterey Bay Aquarium devoted to deep-sea creatures collected by the institute, called Into the Deep.
“There needs to be more funding and more support to document this biodiversity,” said Matsumoto.
Matsumoto and fellow scientists first encountered Atolla reynoldsi about 15 years ago. While most deep-sea Atolla jellies have one longer tentacle they use to catch prey, A. reynoldsi does not.
But in order to determine that A. reynoldsi was a new species, Matsumoto and his colleagues first had to find enough specimens to confirm that its differences weren’t just a fluke. The found about a dozen A. reynoldsi over 16 years, ran DNA sequences and compared them to known jellies.
They were “completely different” than all the other crown jellies, Matsumoto said. So different that they think they could be part of a new genus. But the team isn’t ready to determine that yet.
Atolla reynoldsi was named for Jeff Reynolds, one of the first volunteers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium who helped with important initiatives like its sea otter pup rescue program.
Matsumoto said discovering and naming new species is important because the ocean is such a complex ecosystem. Two new species of whales were identified both in the Gulf of Mexico and New Zealand only last year. “What humans are doing is having an impact on the ocean,” he said. “But we don’t really fully understand what that impact is, because we don’t know who the players are in the ecosystem.”