Every day, we pull the passive acoustic monitoring equipment out of the water when we do our oceanographic data collection. Sometimes, more things come out of the water then what we put in. Our cook, may put the little shrimp (seen below) on our dinner menu tomorrow. But today we had a surprise. This little creature pictured on the left hitched a ride aboard the Compact Passive Acoustic Monitor (CPAM). Our marine mammal experts could not identify it. Can you? Animal, vegetable, mineral? Post your best guess at its name in the comments section.
Looks like a Snipe Eel -- not common, but not infrequent in samples from below 400 meters in the Eastern Tropical Pacific. I recall a video from MBARI or National Geographic showing the eels hanging in the water in an inverted U and "dropping" head first on (crustacean?) prey.
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