Astonishing life dwells in the deep sea . An ongoing ocean expedition to a dynamic marine realm off the little-explored Chilean coast — with seeps and vents emitting nutrients into the water — has spotted a curious, almost alien-looking species. The mission, undertaken by the Schmidt Ocean Institute and its 7,055-pound robotic explorer ROV SuBastian , documented a shimmering species of polychaete crawling on the seafloor.
It's a psychedelic marine worm. "Some polychaetes are bioluminescent; this sassy sparkler has protein structures in the bristles, making them iridescent," the institute posted online. You can see this slowly-moving creature's sparkling bristles, or chaetae, in the video below.
Polychaetes are extremely diverse organisms. "The visual variety among the more than 10,000 described species means a polychaete enthusiast is never bored," Karen Osborn, the curator of Marine Invertebrates at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, explains . "They come in every imaginable color and pattern, from completely transparent to iridescent to candy-striped.
You can find polychaetes of every shape from spherical to sausage-shaped to pencil thin, and every size from microscopic to several feet long. Some are smooth and sleek, others frilly and elaborate." "They come in every imaginable color and pattern, from completely transparent to iridescent to candy striped.
" But they're not just wild sights. "Polychaetes are critical members of all ocean food webs," Osb.