Elusive glass octopus spotted in the remote Pacific Ocean

fahrbot-bot writes: This rarely seen glass octopus bared all recently — even a view of its innards — when an underwater robot filmed it gracefully soaring through the deep waters of the Central Pacific Ocean, off the remote Phoenix Islands, an archipelago located more than 3,200 miles (5,100 kilometers) northeast of Sydney, Australia.

Like other "glass" creatures, such as glass frogs and certain comb jellies, glass octopuses are almost completely transparent, with only their cylindrical eyes, optic nerve and digestive tract appearing opaque. The expedition crew reported two encounters with the glass octopus — an impressive count given that previously there was such limited footage of these clear cephalopods, scientists had to learn about them by studying chunks of them in the gut contents of their predators.

Glass octopuses weren’t discovered until 1918. Little is known about these cephalopods, except that they live in tropical and subtropical areas in the deep ocean in the mesopelagic, or twilight zone, 656 to 3,280 feet (200 to 1,000 meters) below the surface, and the bathypelagic, or midnight zone, 3,280 to 9,800 feet (1,000 to 3,000 m) below the surface.