SHOCKING ABYSS FOOTAGE: Giant ‘Plastic Bag’ Jellyfish Filmed Miles Deep, Rare Ghost Monster Bags Prey in Total Darkness

A jaw-dropping video of a massive, translucent blob drifting through the pitch-black deep sea has exploded online, racking up millions of views and leaving viewers convinced they’ve just watched an alien invasion or a discarded grocery bag come to life.⁠

The clip, originally captured in April 2012 by an Oceaneering ROV during Dive 135 at roughly 5,025 feet (about 1,530 meters), shows a pale, sheet-like creature billowing and folding right next to the robot’s structure in the absolute dark. Overlays on the footage confirm the crushing depth and the date. When it first circulated, people guessed everything from whale placenta to floating plastic trash to a genuine sea monster. Marine biologists quickly ID’d it as Deepstaria enigmatica, one of the rarest and weirdest true jellyfish on the planet.⁠

The Living Plastic Bag That Hunts Like a Trap

Deepstaria enigmatica looks nothing like the tentacled jellies most people picture. It has a thin, wide, almost membrane-like bell—up to about 60 cm (2 feet) across, with one measured specimen hitting roughly 68 cm long by 56 cm wide, that can open into a huge, bag-like shape. There are no long trailing tentacles. Instead, this thing ambushes prey by hanging in the water and then rapidly contracting its bell like a drawstring sack, “bagging” whatever swims into it. A mesh of gastrovascular canals runs across the bell like fine lace or bubble wrap, distributing nutrients while the whole structure ripples with peristaltic waves for movement.⁠

Scientists first hauled up a damaged specimen in 1966 off California using the Deepstar 4000 submersible (Jacques Cousteau’s design), which gave the genus its name. Formal description followed in 1967 by F.S. Russell. Since then, confirmed sightings have been extremely scarce—scattered from Antarctic and near-Antarctic waters to the North Atlantic (including near the UK and Iceland), the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific off California and Mexico. Depth range is typically 600–1,750 meters (roughly 2,000–5,750 feet), right in the midnight zone where sunlight never reaches, temperatures hover near freezing, and pressure is extreme.⁠

Otherworldly video captures rare jellyfish with a hitchhiker in its bell
Fragile Ghost with Hitchhikers

The jelly is so delicate that nets usually shred it, which is why intact views are almost always from ROVs or submersibles. It is solitary, drifts with currents, and can close its bell in seconds when disturbed or feeding. Some individuals have been filmed with bright red isopods living inside the bell—possible symbiotic partners that get protection and snacks while the jelly may (or may not) get anything useful in return. Dead ones become “jelly falls,” raining nutrients onto the seafloor for crabs and other scavengers in a food-poor world.⁠

The 2012 Oceaneering footage captured one of the more dramatic close encounters: the animal is blown and folded by the ROV’s thrusters, revealing internal structures and the characteristic canal network while looking uncannily like a floating sheet of plastic or a collapsed parachute. Later high-definition sightings (including a 2017 ROV encounter off Mexico) confirmed the bagging behavior and the species’ true scale.

What Else Is Down There?

This viral clip is a stark reminder that the deep ocean, more than 95 percent of Earth’s living space, is still basically unexplored. A creature the size of a small table, with no tentacles, that hunts by turning itself into a living trap, can drift for years without anyone seeing it. Experts note that Deepstaria is probably not as rare as the tiny number of records suggests; it is simply huge, paper-thin, and lives where almost nothing can reach it intact. The midnight zone still hides animals that look more like science-fiction props than biology textbooks.

The next time a “mystery blob” video surfaces from an oil-field ROV or research sub, it might not be trash or an alien. It might just be another Deepstaria, or something even stranger, doing what it has done for millions of years in the dark.