Depastrum cyathiforme hadn’t been seen alive since 1976. For nearly 50 years, scientists assumed the stalked jellyfish—barely two inches tall and shaped like a translucent thistle—was gone for good. Then a tourist on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides flipped a rock and spotted four of them stuck to the underside.
Neil Roberts wasn’t on a research expedition. He was just rock-pooling. But what he found matched only a handful of 19th-century drawings and old marine biology field notes. “I had a niggle of doubt,” he told British Wildlife, “but I was well chuffed when I found out it really was the jellyfish.”
Depastrum cyathiforme, also called the “goblet lucernaria,” anchors itself to rocks with a suction pad and stays put, resembling a mix between a sea anemone and something you’d hallucinate during a fever. It was once rare but known, occasionally turning up along southwestern British shores. That ended in 1954. After a final sighting in France in 1976, it simply vanished.
Jellyfish Believed to be Extinct Spotted by Tourist
The rediscovery wasn’t a one-off. Guy Freeman, editor of British Wildlife, traveled to the site after Roberts’ photos surfaced and confirmed another individual was still living there. “When Neil first shared the photos, it was like seeing a ghost,” Freeman said.
There are 50 known species of stalked jellyfish. Only ten have been recorded in British and Irish waters. Most are overlooked. They don’t float, they don’t sting people, and they don’t do much except attach themselves to rocks and pulse around like deep-sea fungi. That’s part of why this find matters.
“This is really a remarkable find,” said Allen Collins from the Smithsonian. “We can now be certain that this rarely encountered species persists.”
Christine Johnson, from Outer Hebrides Biological Recording, called it a rare reminder that valuable discoveries don’t always come from labs. “It is not every day that it is confirmed that [a species] once feared to be extinct still exists,” she said.
What makes it interesting isn’t that Roberts found something new. It’s that he found something we’d already given up on by doing something as simple as paying attention.
The post A Tourist Just Found a Jellyfish That Was ‘Extinct’ for 50 Years appeared first on VICE.
