This Mesmerising Underwater Blob Is Actually A Huge, Rare Mass Of Squid Eggs

A team of divers filmed a rare glimpse of a huge transparent egg sac containing hundreds of thousands of baby squid. The stunning underwater video was filmed by Ronald Raasch, 48, as he was diving with two other team members from the research vessel REV Ocean in the cold waters outside Ørsta, Norway.

It's not known how squids produce these egg masses, but they are fascinating things: giant masses of mucus, sometimes metres across, inside which tens of thousands of eggs can be incubating. It's thought that the female lays a smaller mass that expands on contact with the water. Different squids seem to produce different shapes of egg masses. For instance, the egg mass of the diamondback squid (Thysanoteuthis rhombus), found globally in tropical and subtropical waters, resembles a long tube of mucus with strings of eggs wrapped around it, like a slinky containing up to 43,800 eggs.