Divers Find Giant Floating Blob, Have No Idea What It Is

  While underwater off the coast of Turkey, a group of divers encountered a translucent blob about the size of a car. The blob felt “very soft,” divers said, and appeared “gelatinous.” From afar, the mass looked almost invisible, but up close, the group spotted countless little dots floating in the 13-foot sphere.   Diver Lutfu Tanriover, who captured the blob (which he called “the thing”) on video, told the blog Deep Sea News that the group felt both “excitement and fear” as they approached the mysterious mass. Even after close inspection, the divers say they couldn’t figure out what the blob was.   As Tanriover’s mesmerizing video went viral earlier this month, the Internet leapt at the chance to solve the mystery. Christopher Mah of The Echinoblog ended up being the first to the plate. Mah said in a tweet that Dr. Michael Vecchione, a squid expert and scientist at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, had come up with a possible answer. The blob, Vecchione said, was likely an enormous squid egg mass -- the “largest” he’s ever seen. The scientist speculated that a squid called Ommastrephes bartramii (also known as the red flying squid or the neon flying squid) could be responsible for the mass. Red flying squid are a “common species” that can grow to around 5 feet in length, Smithonian.com says.   As Deep Sea News notes, only one other squid...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news