Today in HistoryâAugust 30: The Mystery of the Golden Blob Begins
Find blob? Check.
Poke blob? Uh-huh.
ID blob? That oneâs gonna take a while.
On this day in 2023, a remotely operated vehicle from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrationâs Okeanos Explorer made dive No. 7 to explore small seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska. Scientists were looking for interesting sea creatures as they mapped volcanic vents and mud volcanoes in U.S. waters deeper than 656 feet.
Well, they found one.
Nearly two miles underwater, southwest of Walker Seamount, in an unnamed volcanic feature, researchers spotted a golden orb about four inches in diameter, smooth and shiny, with a hole in the middle, attached to a rock on the seafloor.
Naturally, they poked it.
It was soft and flaky, which only deepened the mystery. The underwater robot couldnât lift the rock, but the robot was equipped with a vacuum tube. Researchers directed it to simply slurp up the weird golden thing and bring it aboard.
Seeing a specimen up close is usually enough for researchers to solve the mystery. But not in this case.
Instead, it took more than two years of studyâincluding two rounds of DNA sequencingâfor the golden blob to be identified as Relicanthus daphneae, a giant deep-sea tube anemone known to science since the 1970s and formally named in 2006.
Over the course of about 44,000 deep-sea dives, humans have still only visually observed less than 0.001 percent of the seafloor.
The breakthrough clue was its cnidocysts, specialized cells found in invertebrates such as jellyfish and corals that contain their stinging bits. The golden blob contained a particular type called spirocysts, which helped narrow the possibilities.
The golden orb was a part of an anemone called a cuticle, the base the anemone sits on when itâs attached to something. It can be left behind when the anemone dies or moves on. For obvious reasons, we donât get to see this part of deep-sea anemones very often.
Finally, the answer to âwhat did we just poke?â is, well, an anemoneâs butt.
- 3,289.8 meters: Maximum depth on the dive
- 4 hours, 30 minutes, 25 seconds: Time spent on the seafloor on the dive
- 7+ feet: Length of the tentacles of the Relicanthus daphneae
- 1682: William Penn and colonists set sail from England
- 1862: The American Civil Warâs Second Battle of Bull Run ends
- 1983: Guion Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space
