Diver Amy Wainman stumbled upon a strange marine creature with a nearly transparent body off the coast of Simon’s Town in South Africa.
The creature resembles a “ghostly eel” with a transparent body.
The stunning footage shared by Wainman on January 21 shows a creature that looks like a ghostly eel with a transparent body, but no internal organs are visible.
“I have never seen anything like it,” Wainman emphasized. “When I first saw it, I thought it was a piece of nylon or a ribbon floating in the water. But as I got closer, it started to swim. I don’t know what it is.”
The mysterious creature was discovered by Wainman just below the water’s surface while exploring the shallow waters off Simon’s Town, near Cape Town, South Africa.
According to Bradley Stevens, a retired marine science professor who previously worked at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, the creature appears to be an eel at the end of its larval stage.
(Video: Amy Wainman)
“Its size and location suggest that the creature is nearing the end of its migration from the open ocean spawning grounds and will soon become a juvenile eel with a normal shape,” Stevens speculated.
However, Kevin Kocot, an associate professor specializing in invertebrates at the University of Alabama, believes this is an entirely different species belonging to the phylum Ctenophora (comb jellies).
“Some transparent eel larvae, known as Leptocephalus, look very similar. But if you look closely, Leptocephalus has distinct eyes and a mouth at one end, while the mouth of this creature is located in the middle of its body,” Kocot explained. “It could possibly be a Cestum veneris comb jelly.”
