We asked the Monterey Bay Aquarium: What are your top 10 deep-sea animals?

Summary

Monterey Bay Aquarium researchers and biologists count down their top 10 favorite deep-sea animals featured in the upcoming exhibition Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean. The list moves from the colorful and deadly mauve stinger to basket stars, salmon snailfish, predatory tunicates, bone-eating worms, Japanese spider crabs, common siphonophores, sea angels, giant deep-sea isopods, and the striking bloody-belly comb jelly. Along the way, the team explains what makes each creature so weird, beautiful, and perfectly adapted to life in the deep sea, from camouflage and giant eyes to colonial bodies and bone-digesting bacteria. The video is both a celebration of ocean oddities and a preview of how the aquarium hopes to bring rarely seen deep-sea life to the public.

Highlights

• The mauve stinger is gorgeous, pink-purple-gold, and also a venomous little predator ✨
• Basket stars slowly uncurl their arms like something from a spooky dream 🕷️
• Salmon snailfish use their fins almost like hands to feel for food on the seafloor 🖐️
• Predatory tunicates are basically giant sea-floor mouths waiting to snap shut 😮
• Bone-eating worms rely on acid and symbiotic bacteria to feed on whale bones 🦴
• Japanese spider crabs are so huge they can feel taller than a human 😱
• Common siphonophores are colonial organisms made of many specialized zooids working together 🚀
• Sea angels are adorable swimmers with a very not-so-angelic appetite 😈
• Giant deep-sea isopods can go a year or more between meals after gorging themselves 🥔
• Bloody-belly comb jellies use red camouflage and shimmering cilia to vanish in the deep while glowing beautifully 🌈

Key Takeaways

• The deep sea is full of bizarre animals that look straight out of sci-fi 🛸
• Many deep-sea creatures use unusual survival tricks, like camouflage, giant eyes, and even bacteria-powered digestion 🦠
• Some animals are beautiful but dangerous, like the mauve stinger and sea angel 🪼
• Siphonophores are wild because they’re made of many tiny zooids working together like a team 🤝
• Deep-sea species can be enormous, including Japanese spider crabs the size of a car 🦀
• The exhibit Into the Deep aims to bring rarely seen ocean life face-to-face with the public 🌊

Overview

The video is a fun countdown from Monterey Bay Aquarium and MBARI, where scientists and biologists share their favorite deep-sea animals coming to the new Into the Deep exhibition. Each creature gets a quick spotlight, and the staff members react with a mix of awe, humor, and genuine scientific fascination. The result is less like a dry ranking and more like a love letter to the ocean’s strangest inhabitants.

What makes the video especially entertaining is how each animal gets described through memorable imagery. Some are cute-but-deadly, like the sea angel and mauve stinger. Others are pure deep-sea weirdness, like the predatory tunicate, bone-eating worm, and siphonophore. The team also explains the biology behind the wow factor, showing how these animals survive extreme darkness, scarcity, and pressure.

By the end, the countdown lands on the bloody-belly comb jelly, a creature that’s both scientifically fascinating and visually stunning. The video closes by emphasizing how rare it is to see these animals up close and how special it is to bring the deep ocean into an aquarium setting. Overall, it’s a playful introduction to deep-sea life that makes the unknown feel a little more approachable and a lot more incredible.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 02:30: Intro: Bringing the Deep Sea to the Aquarium George Matsumoto from MBARI introduces Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new exhibition, Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean, and highlights that it will feature rare deep-sea animals. The chapter begins a countdown of the aquarium’s favorite deep-sea species, starting with the mauve stinger jelly, described as beautiful but deadly, then moving to the basket star, whose many arms and dramatic movements help it catch food in the water column.
• 02:30 - 05:00: Salmon Snailfish: A Strange, Tadpole-Like Hunter The chapter highlights several bizarre deep-sea creatures and how they survive in extreme conditions. Predatory tunicates are described as giant, mouth-like animals that wait on the seafloor and snap shut when prey swims in, resembling a Venus flytrap.
• 05:00 - 07:30: Predatory Tunicates: Living Sea-Floor Traps Siphonophores are introduced as bizarre-looking colonial organisms made of multiple specialized zooids working together like a coordinated spaceship, and the aquarium team explains how exciting it is to display this unique deep-sea animal to the public.
• 07:30 - 10:00: Common Siphonophore: A Colony of Tiny Zooids This segment contrasts tiny and giant deep-sea isopods, explaining that food scarcity on the sea floor drives giant isopods to gorge when they can and then go long periods without eating. The speakers also note how some people find the animals cute while others see them as eerie or threatening.
• 10:00 - 11:15: Giant Deep-Sea Isopods and the Challenge of Finding Food Tommy opens by expressing excitement about sharing the amazing deep-sea animals featured in this chapter.
• 11:15 - 12:30: Why Deep-Sea Exhibits Matter Tommy expresses excitement about sharing the aquarium’s amazing animals with visitors, reinforcing the appeal and educational value of deep-sea exhibits.

We asked the Monterey Bay Aquarium: What are your top 10 deep-sea animals? Transcription

• Segment 1: 00:00 - 02:30 [George Matsumoto: Deep-Sea Biologist, MBARI] Hi everyone, I'm George Matsumoto from MBARI. We've been working with our colleagues at the Monterey Bay Aquarium to help them bring the deep sea to land in a new exhibition, Into the Deep: Exploring Our Undiscovered Ocean. And when it opens, you'll encounter some of the most incredible and rarely seen animals ever featured in an aquarium exhibition. So here they are! These are the Aquarium's top 10 favorite deep-sea animals. [Text on screen: 10 - Mauve stinger] [MacKenzie Bubel: Aquarium Biologist] The mauve stinger is a beautiful, small, voracious predator of a jelly. It is pink and purple and gold, and it's gorgeous, but it also is deadly. It can sting any type of prey item, not only on its tentacles, but also, it can sting on its bell. I've personally only seen this in a few jellies, I find it very unique and interesting. [Tommy Knowles: Aquarium Biologist] The mauve stinger is one of the first animals you'll encounter when you enter Into the Deep. They're just a really interesting animal with a variety of behaviors that will be on display. [Text on screen: 9 - Basket Star] [Ellen Umeda: Aquarium Biologist] When I look at basket stars, I'm just kind of amazed, because they have so many arms and so many little appendages coming off. [Alicia Botondo: Aquarium Biologist] It looks very Tim Burton-esque. It's sort of like Nightmare Before Christmas. They uncurl their arms in a very slow, dramatic way. [MacKenzie] They can put their arms up and down in the water column to try to catch krill or any type of little meaty snacks that they can find in the deep sea. [Ellen] It just makes me think, how do they not get tangled with themselves? Because there's just so much going on!
• Segment 2: 00:00 - 02:30 [Text on screen: 8 - Salmon snailfish] [Dalton Richardson: Aquarium Biologist] The salmon snailfish is sort of this tadpole-looking creature. They have these huge eyes and a couple little trailing bits under their chin. [Alicia] Instead of using their very large eyes to look for food, they actually are using their fins. [Mary McCarthy: Aquarium Biologist] It kinda looks like a beard on their chin, and they can use that to help locate their food. [Alicia] They're able to use these pectoral fins, which are kinda like little hands, to touch the floor and find the food. And then once they taste something,
• Segment 3: 02:30 - 05:00 then they will bend down and eat it. [Ellen] That's something you definitely don't see very often in this animal world. [Text on screen: 7 - Predatory Tunicate] [Alicia] Predatory tunicates are an extremely unusual animal. [MacKenzie] They look like just a giant mouth, stuck right to the sea floor. [Mary] They wait for something to swim in and then they close the mouth and wait for the food to be digested. More like, you might think of a Venus fly trap. [Alicia] I think they look kind of like one of the pirana flowers from Mario, like the the flower that just (gulping), kinda does that (makes grabbing gesture). [Text on screen: 6 - Bone-eating worm] [Tommy] Everything in the deep sea is used by animals trying to survive in one of the harshest environments on the planet. [MacKenzie] There's even worms that have developed to eat the bones of the whales that have been on the bottom. [Ellen] There aren't very many animals out there that have the ability to break down bone and then use that as a food source. [Mary] Bone worms look like a little thread just sticking out of the bone, but they're way more complex than that. They have acid that they secrete in order to burrow into the bone. And then they're also have a bacteria that live inside of them, and the bacteria is what actually digests the bone and creates nutrients that the bone worm can then use. It's very complicated. For such a little thing. [Text on screen: 5 - Japanese spider crab] [Tommy] We've all seen crabs before, but you probably have not seen crabs like the Japanese spider crab. They are huge! [Dalton] There are reports of Japanese spider crabs that get up to the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, if that gives people context for the size and sheer enormity of this species.
• Segment 4: 02:30 - 05:00 [Alicia] It's a little unnerving when your animals are taller than you. [MacKenzie] They really make you think, if this exists on the bottom of the ocean, what else exists on the bottom of the ocean that we haven't seen yet?
• Segment 5: 05:00 - 07:30 [Text on screen: 4 - Common siphonophore] [Mary] Siphonophores don't look like they should be alive. (laughs) They just look like odd conglomerations of cellophane that somehow exist as a creature. [MacKenzie] They are a colonial organism, which is an organism that's mind blowing to me and I think many scientists that study them. [Ellen] It's actually a collection of multiple little animals called zooids, and each of these little zooids has a specific function that help that animal, as a whole, survive. [MacKenzie] And they all work together. It's like a little spaceship with all the people on it, all working together for a common goal. [Tommy] Siphonophores have never really been displayed in aquariums, so this is really new ground that we're breaking. And we're really excited to bring this totally unique-looking animal to the public and introduce them to one of the coolest species in the deep sea! [Text on screen: 3 - Sea angel] [MacKenzie] I love sea angels. They're a unique, little tiny snail that does not have a shell, that's swimming around the ocean. [Tommy] They have tiny little fins on the side of their body that make them look like little angels. [Alicia] The way that sea angels swim is so beautiful. [Ellen] But one little thing about sea angels that you wouldn't expect is they're voracious predators. [Sound of a needle scratching a record and tense music] [MacKenzie] Really, it can turn into almost a sea devil. [Tommy] When it's time to feed, their mouth opens on the top of their head and these devilish jaws come out to attach onto certain species of sea butterfly that they prey on. [Ellen] So these cute little animals, they're called sea angels but they're actually vicious predators. [Text on screen: 2 - Giant deep-sea isopod] [Alicia] Giant deep-sea isopods look exactly like pill bugs on land, but they're huge!
• Segment 6: 07:30 - 10:00 [Mary] You can have isopods that are like maybe a millimeter long. And then you have a deep-sea isopod, which is like the size of a football. [MacKenzie] Giant deep-sea isopods are, I think, equal part nightmare to wild imagination fantasy. [Mary]Food isn't readily available on the sea floor, and so deep-sea isopods have adapted to eat as much as they can, and then they may not eat for a year or more until they find another large meal. [Dalton] I have this theory that everybody either loves them or hates them. I find that their little faces just look like they're kind of plotting something. Like, I don't know, they just look like they're up to something! [Text on screen: 1 - Bloody-belly comb jelly] [Ellen] The bloody-belly comb jelly is one of the coolest animals in the deep sea. [Dalton] They have this deep, dark, gorgeous red. [Alicia] Sunlight entering the ocean is going to slowly be lost as go deeper and deeper into the water. The first color that you lose is red. And so a lot of animals in the deep sea tend to be red. When we shine a light on them, we think it looks very obvious, but in the dark, red makes you pretty much invisible in the deep sea. [MacKenzie] There's not much to hide behind in the deep sea, so you kind of have to have the ability to camouflage yourself if you're a deep sea animal. [MacKenzie] The sparkly rainbow light that you see is actually just light bouncing off these little tiny plates of cilia that are fused together and stacked on top of each other almost like dominoes. So when one moves, the rest of 'em move too, and it helps them swim through the water. [Tommy] When we shine our Aquarium lights on it, their cilia diffract the light into a moving rainbow all over the body.
• Segment 7: 07:30 - 10:00 The Monterey Bay Aquarium is the only aquarium ever to this display bloody-belly comb jelly, and some of these other amazing deep sea animals. [Dalton] It's not often you really get to meet a deep-sea creature face-to-face. Into the Deep takes this vast and unknown wilderness and brings it into the public awareness. [Ellen] The opportunity to be able to bring what's deep down in the ocean to everyone, is really cool.
• Segment 8: 10:00 - 12:30 [Tommy] We really can't wait to share all these amazing animals with you!