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Tech

Divers in Turkey Found a Creepy Transparent Blob the Size of a Car

Turns out the unusual mass is most likely a ball of squid eggs.
Rachel Pick
New York, US

A group of divers off the coast of Turkey recently encountered something straight out of science fiction—a gelatinous blob the size of a car, and so perfectly transparent as to almost be invisible.

The divers swam closer to the blob, examining it with a flashlight, but still had no idea what they were looking at. It was only after the video filmed by diver Lutfu Tanriover was posted on the internet that a possible explanation emerged: squid eggs.

Michael Vecchione of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History came up with the identification, but he still says it's the largest squid egg mass he's ever seen. He guessed that it's most likely the work of a red flying squid, which grow up to five feet long and are quite common.

Even so, the divers' chances of encountering this sort of thing were very slim. Squid eggs have a short incubation period, so egg masses like this don't even exist for more than a few days. And they're usually created in much deeper water, only occasionally drifting into shallower waters completely by accident.

Why are we so fixated on finding alien life, when so much of it already inhabits our own oceans?