The ocean is filled with creatures that may seem strange to humans. But every now and then these weirdos appear from the deep on dry soil. Here are 10 instances when these ocean creatures made landfall (or were spied on) in 2020.
It’s rare to see a giant squid (Architeuthis dux), so people noticed when one washed up in Cape Town, South Africa on June 7. These squids look very eccentric – their eight arms and two tentacles are covered with serrated suction cups with powerful suction; they have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom (with a diameter of 30 centimeters); and they can reach lengths of up to 18 meters.
This particular giant squid is now in the collections of South Africa’s Iziko museums, and his DNA can help researchers determine if there are only one or more giant squid species living deep beneath the waves.
Read more: Astonishingly intact giant squid washes up in South Africa
7-armed octopus (where’s the 8th arm?)
When a man saw a “red blob” on the rocky beach of an island near Seattle, he snapped a few photos that sparked a friendly debate about the creature’s identity. The blob was clearly a cephalopod (a group that includes squid, octopus, squid, and nautilus), but which species was it?
The scientific consensus came to the seven-armed octopus (Haliphron atlanticus), a deep-water creature that doesn’t usually swim in Washington’s cold coastal waters.
Despite its curious name, the octopus has more than seven arms. In males, the eighth arm is used during mating, and remains modestly tucked away in a pocket by his right eye for the rest of the time.
Read more: Bright ‘red glob’ washes up in Washington. It could be a 7-armed octopus.
9-armed octopus almost becomes dinner
After a seaweed farmer caught a few octopuses in a trap near Japan, he took them home to cook for his mother. But just after she dropped one into a cooking pot, she realized it had nine arms, so she fished it out.
How did this octopus get nine arms? Just as lizards can grow tails, octopuses can regrow arms. However, sometimes the regeneration process flutters and the regrown arm takes on a spur or ninth arm. Sometimes these flubs can occur over and over – an octopus is said to have had 90 arms, according to one 1965 study.
The family donated the body of the nine-armed octopus to a local museum so that the public can see this unusual curiosity.
Read more: Rare 9-armed octopus found off the coast of Japan
Mass dying
Thousands of dead sea creatures, including octopuses, fish and starfish, washed up on Russia’s remote Kamchatka Peninsula. The guilty? A massive poisoning event. Even surfers were bothered and said they felt a slight burning sensation in their eyes after entering the bay.
The die-off may have wiped out as many as 95% of the animals in Kamchatka’s Avacha Bay, a catastrophic event likely to disrupt the food chain in that area for the remaining animals, local researchers said.
Local and international scientists initially thought that man-made pollution was causing the dieback when it started in early October. However, it has since come to light that toxic algae could be the cause of this ecological disaster, the BBC reported.
Read more: Dead animals wash up on a remote Russian peninsula. What is happening?
To go fishing
Man finds giant spider dragging his goldfish out of the pond https://t.co/DB5vQZckUc pic.twitter.com/XzIDZWovVkJanuary 2, 2020
A man was shocked to discover that his goldfish, Cleo, had achieved its goal by an unexpected eight-legged predator – a spider.
Cleo lived in a pond near the man’s house. Apparently her assassin did too – a nursery web spider, or semi-aquatic arachnid that can walk on still water, dive below the surface to escape predators, and even “fish” for prey many times its size.
This nursery web spider dragged Cleo ashore, apparently for a fishing party. (We’re sorry, Cleo!)
Read more: A man caught a spider eating his goldfish and, well, it’s scary
Trashy poop
A green turtle caught in a net off the coast of Argentina had a very upset stomach. How do we know? It pooped out loads of human waste, including bits of nylon bags and hard plastic.
The turtle has likely mistaken this debris for its common prey, such as jellyfish, sea grasses and worms. The waste it ate took up space in its belly, making it likely difficult for the turtle to eat real food and get the nutrients it needed to survive.
According to the Mundo Marino Foundation in Argentina, veterinarians gave the turtle a drug that helped him defecate, and the turtle recovered.
Read more: The green turtle that is rescued from the fishing net defecates all kinds of human waste
Shark vs Swordfish
Scientists were thrown for a loop when a dead thresher shark washed up on the coast of Libya with a swordfish ‘sword’ embedded in its body. Swordfish are known to be aggressive towards animals they consider threats (including some whales, sea turtles and humans), but they have never been documented to attack thresher sharks.
Thresher sharks eat small fish and would not pose a threat to swordfish, the researchers said.
Perhaps the two fought over prey, the scientists said, although it’s also possible the stabbing was accidental.
Read more: Whodunit dissolved when ‘sword’ is found embedded in thresher shark
Fishy love
What do you get if you accidentally cross Russian sturgeon with American paddlefish?
An unusual love hybrid – everyone, say “hello” to the sturddlefish.
There are now about 100 of this strange hybrid in captivity, researchers announced in the journal Genes. Scientists have no plans to make more. The sturgeon fish was created when the team tried to help the critically endangered Russian sturgeon (Acipenser gueldenstaedtii), a popular caviar supplier. The researchers thought American paddlefish sperm would trigger asexual egg development in the sturgeon, but (as you probably guessed), that didn’t happen. The eggs of the sturgeon fused with the sperm of the paddlefish, and hybrids were born.
Mazel tov!
Read more: Scientists accidentally create ‘impossible’ hybrid fish
Puppy-size sea “pill bugs”
Remember looking for pill bugs (or potato bugs or roly polies) when you were a kid? Can you imagine a large one, about the size of a puppy, lurking deep in the sea?
Like a pill cover, this strange-looking beast is an isopod, and it is the largest ever recorded. Found in Indonesia and dubbed The gigantic Bathynomus (“rakasa” means “giant” in Indonesian), this isopod is about 33 cm long and is the first new giant isopod found in more than a decade.
Read more: Huge ‘Darth Vader’ sea beetle pulled from waters off Indonesia
Marine blob
What looks like a party balloon but lives deep underwater? A new species called ctenophore Duobrachium sparksae that is related to comb jelly.
Researchers first spied these weird golf tee-sized creatures in an underwater canyon off the coast of Puerto Rico in 2015, but they didn’t publish the results until this year. Every time D. sparksae (Can we just call it “sparky”?) Movements, rows of its tiny hair-like cilia refract light into a prism of shimmery colors, Live Science reported.
We hope Sparky has a great New Year and that you will too!
Read more: Newly discovered marine blob looks like “party balloon” with two strings, scientists say
Originally published on Live Science.