A purple squid with eyes so googly it could easily be mistaken for a character in the movie “Finding Nemo” was recently spotted by scientists off the coast of Southern California.
The so-called stubby squid (Rossia pacifica) is a species of bobtail squid native to the northern Pacific Ocean. These adorable sea creatures can be found in waters from Japan to Southern California, and typically dwell along the ocean floor, at depths of around 984 feet (300 meters), though they have been spotted as deep as 4,260 feet (1,300 m), according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI).
The stubby squid’s giant eyes, that “look painted on,” delighted the scientists aboard the Exploration Vessel (E/V) Nautilus. In a live stream of the Nautlius’ undersea explorations, one researcher said the googly-eyed squid looks “like some little kid dropped their toy.”
“On that watch it happened to be a lot of geology folks or ecology folks, so a lot of the commentary was of course more like ‘What is this thing, it’s so cute!’ and sometimes we have less of that when we see rocks,” Samantha Wishnak, a science communication fellow aboard the E/V Nautilus, told Live Science.
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