Image of the Month: January 2014
Blue button jellyfish Porpita porpita
Jellyfish and cephalopods belong to the most eye-catching animals occurring in oceanic waters of tropical oceans. Here, we show two species: the Blue Button Jelly (Porpita porpita) (above), and the “Macrotritopus larva” of the Atlantic Longarm Octopus (Octopus “defilippi”) (right) that - among many other spectacular species - were collected in the central eastern Atlantic Ocean south of the Cape Verde Islands in June 2013 during the RV Meteor expedition M 97 .
The animals were caught with plankton trawls (MOCNESS 1, 2 mm mesh size; CALCOFI net, 1 mm mesh size) in the upper 1000 m, mostly during night or twilight. Some of the species were sampled in about 300 to 600 m depth which was in the range of a locally developed oxygen minimum zone. The collection sampled during M97 shows the impressive diversity of species and life-forms highlighting the importance of tropical oceans as biodiversity hotspots.
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