A bizarre new species of jellyfish has been discovered in the deep waters off the Californian coast
The bell-shaped creature spans a metre in diameter and has been nicknamed “big red”, because of its unusual deep red colour. The US and Japanese teams that discovered it say the species deserves its own subfamily.
Tiburonia granrojo was discovered using video cameras on deep-diving remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Its colour and shape set it apart from its other gelatinous relatives, but it has another unusual characteristic — a complete lack of tentacles.
Instead, the jelly has four to seven fleshy arms that it uses to capture food. While jellyfish species normally can be distinguished by the number of tentacles they have, the number of arms differs between individual big reds.
