The strange marine animal – spotted at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean – is rarely photographed, let alone caught on video.
Experts from the Ocean Exploration Trust (OET) onboard the research vessel E/V Nautilus saw four Palau nautilus individuals (Nautilus belauensis) in Palau, an archipelago in the western Pacific Ocean.
The researchers scream and giggle when they realise what they’re seeing. “It’s finally happened,” one of them shouts. “It only took 15 years,” another laughs.
According to OET, these are the first sightings of nautiloids from E/V Nautilus after 1,000+ remotely operated vehicle (ROV) dives over a period of 15 years.
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“Being in the control van for our first sighting of this animal was pretty incredible,” says Jacob Ottaviani, video engineer and documentarian on this expedition, and Video Editor at OET. “Everyone was so excited – you could feel the collective energy and childlike joy – finally seeing something everyone had been hoping to see.”
The nautilus is the most primitive cephalopod. There are 11 different species of chambered nautilus, which have different sections inside their shell that help them move around like a submarine.
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In one of the videos, the strange animal can be seen moving along the seafloor using jet propulsion. “It’s chugging along,” one of the researchers comments.
“In addition to the obvious milestone of seeing a nautilus while onboard the eponymous Nautilus, it was also surreal to encounter an animal whose body plan and behaviours have barely changed since the age of the dinosaurs,” says Samantha Wishnak, Expedition Leader and Operations Coordinator at OET.
