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Giant Sea Specimen Sliced for Science
Experts sent pieces; giant octopus theory loses ground.
Scientists around the globe were waiting to get their hands on samples from a huge sea specimen found on Chile’s coast, but already some were discounting the possibility it could be the remains of a giant octopus. “From the photos I’ve seen, I’ve little doubt that it is going to turn out to be from a whale, but maybe I’ll be surprised,” Sidney Pierce, the biology departmert chair at the University of South Florida, told MSNBC.com.
Pierce's team is one of five that have been sent samples for DNA testing. Others are in England, France, Italy and New Zealand.
In Chile, meanwhile, a researcher who took samples from the 40-foot-long mass said he was certain it is not a giant octopus. “I couldn’t tell you what it is but it’s not an octopus,” said Sergio Letelier, a scientist with the Museum of Natural History in Santiago.
Letelier, who heads a mollusk laboratory, said the tissue was extremely tough and thick but did not have the tentacles, organs or the smell of an octopus. But he was too puzzled to venture a guess on its identity.
“It may be an unknown species of marine animal. It might be part of the stomach of a whale. I can’t confirm anything until tests are done,” he said.
Pierce hoped to receive a sample this week, and then it would take a week or so to do some of the measurements. “If we are able to recover any DNA, it may take a couple of more weeks after that,” he said.
“It’s fairly expensive and time consuming to do this stuff,” he added, “so if we don’t get results fairly rapidly, I’ll have to give up on it — but I’m optimistic that we can get an answer.”
Pierce noted that his team has tested samples from four earlier finds and that electron microscopy determined that all were whale blubber collagen. The oldest specimen was found in 1896 on a Florida beach. The others were found on Australia’s Tasmanian coast in the 1960s, another off Bermuda and one along Nantucket Sound.
Dubbed the “blob” since it was first spotted two weeks ago by a Chilean Navy plane, the specimen was initially mistaken for a beached whale. When whale experts with Chile’s Center for Cetacean Conservation got to the remote site they didn’t know what to make of it.
“We’d never before seen such a strange specimen,” said Elsa Cabrera, director of the center, adding that the blob didn’t smell like a whale or feel like whale skin.
The round substance looks like a mammoth jelly fish and is about as long as a school bus.
Steve Webster, senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California, said the specimen could be skin, particularly if it had rooted or separated from the rest of the whale.
“In addition,” he said, “at least 50 percent to 80 percent of the length of a giant squid or octopus is arms and tentacles, not the body. >From what I can see in the picture, this is one big mass of tissue, and is not divided into what might be arms or tentacles.”
Webster raised the possibility that “if the blob is really gelatinous, and not particularly tough and leathery,” then it could be what’s known as a pyrosome — a colony of millions of plankton that can grow to up to 60 feet long.
He said that genetic analysis of the tissue should reveal some clues to identify the specimen.
“If this were just the head and body of a squid or octopus,” he added, “then it appears to be far larger than any such critter known to date.”
Source: MSNBC.com
actually I accused everyone including my self, but with exception of Elbaz who mention whale blubber, of most likely being wrong, also you are a exception as well since you did not put a anything down at all.