Morphologic friend and colleague Akihiro Shiroza recently returned from a stint at sea aboard a NOAA research vessel. He spent several weeks floating amidst the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico studying the effects of the spill on the pelagic plankton community. As an accomplished artist and videographer, NOAA asked Aki to formally document their work on video. This allowed him unprecedented access to capture film of the rainbow-hued sheen of oil that coats the surface of the Gulf. ‘Resonance of Contrary Components’ is at once disconcerting and sublime.

This video was sent to us by a friend who works as a commercial oil rig diver in the Gulf of Mexico. He tells us that it was filmed at 7828 feet deep in the Mississippi Canyon trench on another project that his company is working on. I’m assuming that it was filmed with an unmanned submersible or remote camera. The creature appears to be a type of squid that has evolved incredibly long tentacles that hang downward, jellyfish-style. 8,000 feet deep is a seriously extreme environment, probably low in oxygen, zero light, and little water movement. It is incredible just how much we don’t know about the alien creatures that live at such depths. We’ll do out best to try to contact some cephalopod experts to see if we can get a positive ID…