This see-through sea cucumber, dubbed Enypniastes (pictured), was spotted at depths of about 1.7 miles (2.7 kilometers) during a 2009 expedition in the northern Gulf of Mexico, scientists say. (See pictures of a deep-sea fish with a transparent head.)
The strange invertebrate creeps forward on its many tentacles while sweeping sediments filled with tiny critters into its mouth. When it's ready to find another feeding ground, the sea cucumber "blooms into a startling curved shape and swims away," CoML team members said in a statement.
What looks like an ancient gold treasure is actually a tiny copepod (shown magnified). The crustacean was among 680 copepod specimens--most new to science--that were collected during a 2009 expedition in the Atlantic abyss.
"The abyssal fauna is so rich in species diversity and so poorly described that collecting a known species is an anomaly," CoML team member David Billett, of the U.K.'s National Oceanography Centre, said in a statement.
