Out of the abyssal depths: Divers find mysterious giant blob near Turkish coast (VIDEO)

Published time: 29 Jul, 2015 18:14Edited time: 29 Jul, 2015 23:00

© Lutfu Tanrıover / Vimeo

An enigmatic and gigantic translucent sphere floating near the Turkey’s coast recently found by a group of divers, baffling the experts around the world.

A car-sized almost invisible underwater object was discovered by a pair of divers as they were swimming near the coast of a small town in Turkey on July 9. The sphere was drifting 22 meters below the sea level and was about 4 meters wide.

The blob looked gelatinous and felt “very soft,” according to one of the divers, named Lutfu Tanriover, who also took footage of the strange phenomenon.

The Istanbul-based diver investigated it with an underwater torch. Although the mass was looking totally transparent, upon a closer view the group spotted small white dots filling the underwater “cloud.”

The divers described their finding as a mixture of a miracle and a nightmare and admitted they felt “both excitement and fear” as they neared the otherworldly object, as they told the Deep Sea News.

Lutfu Tanriover recorded the entire encounter with the mysterious sphere on camera and posted it in the internet in hope to find an explanation for the “thing” that appeared to be a total mystery.

Finally, a scientist from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, Dr. Michael Vecchione, who saw the video, came up with a possible explanation of the underwater puzzle. Dr. Vecchione alleged that “the thing” is a huge squid egg mass, possibly the largest ever seen so far.

As for the squid that had possibly produced a sack of spawn this big, Dr. Vecchione supposed it could have been “a common local species” called the red flying squid or the neon flying squid, the Deep Sea News reports.

According to the Deep Sea News, this sea animal can grow up to about 1.5 meter long with its tentacles packed with suckers equipped with sharp “teeth.” However, nobody has ever seen a red flying squid laying eggs.

The squid egg mass of similar size has been reported only once. In 2008, Dr. Danna Staaf documented such mass in the Gulf of California. That time it was between 3 and 4 meter wide and contained from 600,000 to 2 million eggs.

However, that time it belonged to one of the largest, the most intelligent and dangerous squids known – the Humboldt squid. This species, 2 meter long, hunt in packs communicating through skin color changing. With a powerful parrot-like beak, these squids, known as red devils, have been recorded to attack people, dislocating the victim’s limbs and breaking bones.

As for the squid eggs, they are rarely found in shallow waters as squids usually lay eggs deep in the ocean with the developing squids taking just three days to hatch, the Deep Sea News reports with a reference to Dr. Staaf. The depth and small window of time that they exist in explains why such egg masses are so rarely found.