ID request from Schmidt's ascent today

[jeffday]

@GPO87 need your expertise on this one, i'm utterly stumped.

location is pacific side of costa rica.

thought it was cranchia scabra but from what i can make out of the fin shape in the low lighting it looks way too lanceolate for that genus, or helicocranchia (funnel's too small for that genus anyway). can't make out any tubercules at the mantle-funnel fusion either so like, i've exhausted all of my cranchiid diagnostic criteria lol

Return to La Pulpería | SOI Divestream 628 PART 2

Welcome aboard R/V Falkor (too) for our Octopus Odyssey (too) expedition! This 14-hour dive will focus on visiting La Pulpería. The dive will start by visiti...

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[jeffday]

here's a couple of sections where you can see the edge of the mantle fin doing the sinusoidal movement thing, i've upped the exposure and lowered the contrast so it's possible to get a slightly better idea of the overall shape

https://x.com/jeffday/status/1734737335802008049?s=20

 

[jeffday]

kat bugged @GPO87 directly, final verdict between the two of them was megalocranchia or liguriella, or a taoniin in general

https://x.com/ALCESonline/status/1735134450244317250?s=20

 

[jeffday]

a couple of very brief snippets of this observation made it into the 4K highlight reel from this expedition, but nothing that would further elucidate the ID, i don't believe.

 

[jeffday]

heres the best we got from the full res framegrabs uploaded to MGDS, ive attached the unaltered image and then a crop that ive adjusted the brightness on a bit.

 

[jeffday]

there's an image of this on schmidt's creative commons gallery that's been brightened a bit, idk if this clarifies things at all, but it's an additional shot, at least

 

[tonmo]

Great shot. @GPO87, any evolved thoughts on this one?

 

[GPO87]

Evolved? haha. No.

This is another one of those "pick your poison" cranchiids. It could be Teuthowenia (and that's the way I would lean here), but with better shots of the tentacle clubs, could turn out to be galiteuthis or taonius (although the latter seems less likely with those mantle proportions). Even more remotely it could be Liguriella, but this doesn't look like a fully mature adult, and I would expect the eyes to be a bit more stalked if that was the case. I can confidently say it is not Megalocranchia, given the absence of internal photophores!