Scientists Spotted Bizarre 'ET-Like' Creatures Under Pacific Ocean — Then, They Took a Closer Look
Sea sponges. At first glance, these springy, granular creatures may resemble plants or underwater versions of woollyheads. But they’re actually sessile animals that latch onto the seafloor, reproduce, and feed on small bacteria and plankton that pass by in the waters. They’re, in fact, ingenious filter feeders that filter huge volumes of water, making it useful for other sea animals. Squeeze them a bit, and they’ll fizz out a trail of tiny bubbles. While it is not unusual to find a carpet of sponges, in a 2017 expedition, scientists observed an ostium of glass sponges that left them stunned. In a paper published in PeerJ, they revealed that these oddly sculpted sponges gave the impression of extra-terrestrial creatures.
The discovery was made during “2017 Laulima O Ka Moana: Exploring Deep Monument Waters Around Johnston Atoll expedition” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), A team of marine scientists and biologists aboard the Okeanos Explorer ship were exploring previously undiscovered seamounts, or underwater mountains, around 1.5 miles underwater in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, nearly 850 miles off the southwest coast of Hawaii. Instead of seamounts, they came across a breathtaking seascape teeming with alien-like creatures rising out of the rocky seabed.
Dr. Chris Mah of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (NMNH) dubbed the scene the “Forest of the Weird.” But it wasn’t an ordinary forest composed of underwater plants. In a scene straight out of a Dr. Seuss book, the spectacle unfolded into oddly shaped corals, including some that resembled frizzy bottlebrushes and others that were flattened or harp-shaped with leggy, pink brittlestars, relatives of starfish, wrapped around their branches, The Guardian describes.
The alien-like glasshouse mostly comprised glass sponges with their concave sides directed towards the current. The body looked like a beanstalk and the head was bulbous and melon-shaped with two alien-like eyes gazing eerily at the observer. The frilly sponges jutted out of the sea floor like squishy kites caught in the wind and hoisted by an invisible spool with stalky threads. The sight reminded scientists of Steven Spielberg’s 1982 movie E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which is why they nicknamed the newly-discovered species “E.T. sponges.” These creatures looked like they were from space more than they belonged to the Earth’s waters.
Dr. Cristiana Castello Branco, a postdoctoral researcher who discovered the “E.T. sponge,” shared in a press release that typically, it is very difficult to identify a new species of deep-sea sponges. So, for this discovery, they analyzed the “spicules,” the skeletal remains of the sponges, using powerful microscopes in their laboratory. She explained that the way spicules are organized in a sponge’s body offers a clue to its true identity. To verify whether it is a previously-classified species or a new one, they use comparisons and deductions.
Branco said that when she examined the spicules of this newfound glass sponge community, she instantly realized that they had never been known before. They were shaped like spiky snowflakes and daisies with drooping petals, she told The Guardian. In 2020, she and her team scientifically named these creatures Advhena magnifica, meaning “magnificent alien.” Samples of the ET sponge were collected using the mechanical arm of a deep-diving robot, controlled via cable by a ship on the surface. Branco said these remote technologies “are a game-changer for her work.”
Moving on, Branco said that the study of these unusual sponges “provides a necessary basis for future environmental management decisions as well as bioprospecting studies.” It also unlocks possibilities for discovering other similar glasshouses of sponges in the planet’s watery realm. “When exploring the deep, you just never know what you'll find,” the team wrote in a YouTube description.