"It was fascinating"

Diver films alien-like creature off the coast of Spain

(Bild: kameraOne (Screenshot))

A diver had a highly unusual encounter off the coast of Las Palmas, the largest city in the Canary Islands. At a depth of eight meters, he came across an alien-like creature, a so-called pyrosome.

Javi Benavides was swimming off Las Palmas in June when he came across the pyrosome. His fascinating photos, which have only now been published, show how the creature, which is also known as a fire roller and consists of thousands of tiny individual animals, moves with the current in the sea (see video above).

"It was fascinating to watch them"
"I've been a diver for more than 20 years, and this is only the second time I've come across a pyrosome," Benavides described his encounter with the creature. "It's not everyday you see something like this. It was fascinating to observe it."

The alien-like creature, which is also known as a fire roller, consists of thousands of tiny individual animals.(Bild: kameraOne (Screenshot))

Pyrosomes are free-swimming colonies of tiny organisms, so-called zooids (individual animals, note), which are normally found in warm waters near the surface. Each zooid is only a few millimeters in size.

Pyrosomes can grow to a length of twelve meters
The colonies have the shape of a bell or a thick-walled cylinder that is closed on one side. With a diameter of three to four centimetres, they usually reach a length of 15 to 20 centimetres. The largest species, Pyrosoma spinosum, can even grow up to twelve meters long in exceptional cases.

Colonies of this size have been found in the Indian Ocean. In the Atlantic and Pacific, the colonies, which are embedded in a kind of gelatinous mantle, reach a length of around one meter with a diameter of around ten centimeters.