Researchers at the Schmidt Ocean Institute were stunned by an iridescent polychaete (bristle worm) captured on film while on expedition in Chile.
“To describe this polychaete, one simply must use jazz hands — it is the only way to capture this deep-sea worm’s dazzle,” Schmidt Ocean Institute says on Instagram. “Some worms are bioluminescent, but this sassy sparkler has protein structures in the bristles that make them iridescent.”
The footage of this spectacular animal was captured by an underwater robot while exploring a nearshore deep-sea feature called the Chile Margin.
Here, “a submerged continental shelf extends from the country’s west coast and drops steeply and suddenly into the Pacific Ocean,” says Schmidt Ocean Institute.
This margin runs the entire length of South America and its conditions make it “a natural laboratory for investigating chemosynthetic and deep-sea environments that host animals like this [queue jazz hands] shimmering deep-sea worm.”
Images and videos/Schmidt Ocean Institute
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