What lives around 1,000m (approx 3,200ft) underwater, is the size of a chickpea and looks like the plump pink rear end of a pig? This question had scientists puzzled for a long time. Teams from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) occasionally spotted these odd creatures while surveying the Monterey Canyon, off the coast of California, with remotecontrolled submersibles. But they couldn’t figure out what kind of animal it was.
It wasn’t until the submersible pilots managed to carefully collect a few specimens of these creatures that MBARI scientists had their first chance to study these strange animals up close. When they did, they realised that they’re actually a kind of bristle worm, or polychaete, a huge group of marine worms that live throughout the ocean, but mostly on the seafloor. They also realised these floating worms are highly unusual.