What Is This 'Human-Sized Mystery Blob' Floating Off Cuba's Coast?

It's the size of a human. It has a light, translucent pink color. And it's floating off the coast of Cuba. What is "it"? Well, that's exactly what a researcher was trying to figure out. But for now let's just call it a blob.

(Image via Deep Sea News)

Sounds like a case for Brown University PhD student Rebecca Helm who is a "JellyBiologist," maintaing a blog of the same name.

In a guest post for Deep Sea News, Helm wrote of her latest inquest about the "human-sized mystery blob," saying she first became aware of it in an email June 20.

(Image via Deep Sea News)

But even Helm didn't know right away quite was it was. She wrote that it took digging through "[roughly] 247 aquarium forums, journal articles and poorly-translated Japanese websites" to find the answer.

Dun dun, nah nah!

She figures the blob is "the biggest mass of teensy eggs that I have ever seen."

The eggs are diamond-shaped squid (Thysanoteuthis rhombus).

Eventually, the diamond-shaped squid will grow up to one meter in length. As an adult, females lay an "egg mass," like the one we're seeing here that Helm wrote "bobbed through the ocean, ultimately bumping into a very alarmed group of Cubans, who in turn emailed someone who emailed some else who emailed the listserv that ultimately emailed me."

Check out this video to see what such an egg mass looks like while moving with the currents of the water:

And there you have it. Finally a blob mystery solved. Check out our other stories about mysterious goop, goo, slime and jelly-like spheres that have had less succinct conclusions as to their identity.

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(H/T: io9)

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