Scientists discover a potential new species: Caspar The Ghost Octopus
Technically Incorrect: Somewhere just off an island near Hawaii, there's something scary. Or is it friendly? It's definitely different.
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An interesting find, to say the least.
I know people who are haunted by octopuses.
They find them threatening, otherworldly, slimy and far too tentacled. Personally, the best one I've even seen (eaten) was in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
However, scientists have just unearthed a peculiar octopod (as these things can be technically known) just off the coast of Hawaii and very far down.
As the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration described it, the Okeanos Explorer went down 4,000 meters (around 13,123 feet) just off Necker Island, near Hawaii.
There, there encountered a little ghostlike thing with eight legs.
The researchers weren't looking for ghost octopuses. They were collecting geological samples. But then they came upon this pale thing sitting on a rock.
The explorers said that this looked like a incirrate octopod, which doesn't have fins or cirri (filaments found on the creature's sucker).
They also said that unlike other octopods, this little Caspar-like creature didn't seem muscular.
The NOAA speculates that this is "almost certainly an undescribed species and may not belong to any described genus."
At heart, NOAA zoologist Michael Vecchione told National Geographic, we don't know much about what goes on at the bottom of the sea.
How long before some fine Hollywood studio decides that a new Caspar the Friendly Ghost movie should be set in the furthest depths?
I'd give it five days.