The rare jellyfish was first recorded 25 years ago in Papua New Guinea

type of jellyfish Chirodectes maculatus It was recorded by a diver off the coast of Papua New Guinea in Oceania. The images have impressed marine biologists around the world, as they are considered a rare specimen.

This type of jellyfish was first seen only in 1997 by a team of scientists on the Great Barrier Reef. Until then, the jellyfish was only officially thought to have been seen once, off the coast of Far North Queensland.

But new photos, taken by a business owner, show that the remarkable creature was in the area, swimming alongside a group of tourists. Described by the diver on social media.

“I saw a new type of jellyfish while diving today. It has beautiful markings and is a bit larger than a ball football And she’s swimming really fast,” he wrote on his profile on Facebook.

Still baffled, the Borcherds turned to his South African daughter, expert Lisa Ann Gershwin of the Australian Naval Consulting Service Stinger, for help.

“I thought it was interesting, because I had never seen one of those before, so I sent [o vídeo] For my daughter who downloaded the jellyfish app. She couldn’t recognize him, so she uploaded the recording to the app, and within half an hour, she had a very excited jellyfish expert on her phone from Tasmania, she said.

The expert noted that, at first, she thought it was the same jellyfish that had been caught in the Great Barrier Reef in May 1997. “I was absolutely shocked when they sent me the pictures. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, what is that and where is that?'” Gershwin said to ABC.

types Chirodectes maculatus It was first described in 2005 by a team of Australian scientists after they captured and preserved a specimen in 1997.

Scientists initially described the species as Chiropsalmus. Gershwin said he published another paper on taxonomy a year later and formally transferred it to the genus Chirodectes, where it was accepted.

With regard to information about animal poison, there are still no recorded cases of its bite in humans. During the 1997 manipulation, the jellyfish was unable to stick to or help any volunteer’s hand.