There are two types of people aboard the research vessel Rachel Carson: There's me, quite sick and spending a good amount of time on the deck trying to keep an eye on the bobbing horizon, and there are the scientists minding the remotely operated vehicle dangling below us. Sitting in a chair with a joystick on the armrest, surrounded by glowing monitors in an otherwise darkened room, a pilot guides the SUV-sized robot through a galaxy of life--little fishes, free-swimming crustaceans, jellyfish, and other gelatinous critters that dart out of the way--stopping every so often to cross something off a species shopping list. Scientists with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and its associated Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, are on a methodical hunt for specimens for a new exhibit, Into the Deep, opening in the spring. It'll be loaded with exceedingly fragile, rarely seen animals kept healthy in life-support systems that aquarists have taken years to perfect. "Some of them we call'wet tissue paper,'" says Wyatt Patry, a senior aquarist, speaking of the species they're seeking.

Researchers have identified an eerie new form of deep-sea creature using only high-definition video. In 2015, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) piloted a remotely operated vehicle through an underwater canyon off the coast of Puerto Rico. At a depth of more than two miles the drone came across a ctenophore, or comb jelly, unlike any other species researchers had encountered. It was rectangular, had two long tentacles and moved as if it was anchored to the seafloor. Unable to take a specimen, researchers used the footage to develop an anatomical diagram of the gelatinous blob, which they've named Duobrachium sparksae.

When Leonid Moroz, a gregarious Russian-born neuroscientist and geneticist at the University of Florida, began studying ctenophores nearly a decade ago, he had a fairly simple goal in mind. He wanted to determine exactly where the blobby marine creatures--which are more commonly known as comb jellies because of the comb-like projections they use to swim--belonged on the tree of life. After spending several years sequencing ctenophores, Moroz and his team discovered that the animals were missing many of the genes found in the nervous system of other animals thought to be closely related, such as coral and actual jellyfish. That meant that they'd branched off on their own up to 550 million years ago and were potentially among the first animals on earth. "It was quite surprising to see," said Moroz, almost like stumbling on a group of aliens living in the sea.