Unknown Phylum. Any suggestions?

[Clem]

Phil, you may very well be on to something. Via personal correspondence, this:

Personally, I think it's a small shark wearing a human
liver as a hat...just to freak people out. ...and it worked.

Cuttlegirl, IMO this animal's particular color scheme is defensive, with ventral surfaces blanched white to mitigate its shadow and dorsal surfaces dialed to a value that's gray-scale neutral. I wonder if the zebra patterning might serve a defensive purpose, too, i.e. bold stripes equals "Back off, pal."

Cheers,
Clem

 

[Graeme]

Above post: Reminds me of a alien mother ship.

...my bet would be a Tremoctopus, the shape doesn't strike me like a ray, nor a giant man eating jellyfish, sea hare or nudibranch. Some very good analysis work on the photos there.

Well that's the ship from the Abyss. Isn't it? As for this beastie, after reading through this thread I have come to the conclusion that due to the amount of dispute, if can neither be an octopus, nor a slug or anything like that. Therefore it must be a "marshin".

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Well,I just heard bck from Dr Bill Rudman. He had been in New Zealand fo the last two weeks .... and sadly we never caught up.

This is what he has to say of the unusual pics

"The only 2 opisthobranchs of that size which swim - at times are various species of Sea Hare [Aplysia] and the pleurobranch Euselenops luniceps, see here

But the shape of this mystery doesn't really fit either so like you I don't know. If you get some more photos I am happy to have a look."

Thanks Bill. Magic stuff. Of course we haven't received any more pics, so the jury is still out (although it certainly is more like Tremoctopus than any other beast that we know of).

 

[Jeff Archer]

Wow. It really looks like a bottlenose dolphin rostrum and dorsal fin. Could it be that some deformed animal has made it through the challenges of life to this stage? Why not? I did.
Or, is there any way its a ray that's had its flaps bitten off by the pod of dolphins nearby? I've seen it happen. It's not a pretty sight.

 

[Jeff Archer]

Of course my last reply refers to the posts at the very start of this thread, like...ages ago.

 

[monty]

Of course my last reply refers to the posts at the very start of this thread, like...ages ago.

to TONMO, and better late than never... it's not as if we figured out what the heck the critter is, so further input is, of course, still encouraged!

 

[OB]

Interesting "trunk" on a bluering, for comparison...

 

[Michael Blue]

Verrry interesting...

 

[OB]

And this one...

 

[CapnNemo]

Hmmmm, is this a feature of octopuses in general, or just the blue ring? There's a huge colour variation on the mystery beast.

 

[FishBait]

Fascinating stuff here. I don't think I saw it mentioned and I'm not sure what the fine detail is on a Tremocto, but the 4th image posted by Steve does not show a clear mantle/head interface. If going by where the 2 pores are located, and the supposed lateral openings on the mantle, there should be a line going across the animal that illustrates where the head and mantle meet, I see none. Again could be just poorly shown by the images. Can't wait to see how this ends.

 

[tonmo]

Again, for anyone who believes that this is a cephalopod, one of the facts we know is that this thing was seen swimming nearby dolphins. What are the thoughts that this could be mimicry? I'm not saying at all that it's the mimic octopus (obviously it's not), but assuming that it is a ceph, how far-fetched might it be to assume that it is engaging in mimicking behavior? Don't think I saw a whole lot of discussion on that view in this thread. I realize it's a big assumption to make, but if you do make that assumption, this idea helps make sense of the overall scenario, don't you think?

 

[Steve O'Shea]

Gwen sent me the following 5 images and text last week; I forgot to post them here.
.............
Dear Steve

I thought you would be interested to see these pics. They were taken about 2 weeks after my strange sighting, about 150km further south along the coastline. I cant see the two pits or the nose like protrusion, but am I right in saying that this is a Tremoctopus?
The girl who took the photos, didnt know to take measurements or anything, just thought it looked interesting. Apparently it was alive when she found it. Im afraid thats all I know.

Gwen
.............
They sure are Tremoctopus, and in the last image you'll see some rather interesting colour around the edge of the mantle; looks the same as that in lateral profile in the first images (one of the things that had m rather confused). The more I think about it the more comfortable I am with Clem's rendition of the animal, and that the first set of images are Tremoctopus doing something rather weird.

 

[Steve O'Shea]

The last two ...

 

[Clem]