Four kilometers below the surface off Western Australia’s Ningaloo Coast, a robotic submarine drifted along the wall of a submarine canyon and pointed its cameras at something almost no one has ever seen: a giant phantom jelly, its translucent bell wider than a car and its ghostly oral arms trailing meters behind it. The encounter, captured during a 31-day research voyage that ended in April 2026, would have been remarkable on its own. But the same expedition also pulled water samples from the canyon that contained environmental DNA belonging to the giant squid, Architeuthis dux, one of the most elusive predators on Earth.
The twin discoveries emerged from a systematic survey of Cape Range and Cloates submarine canyons. According to the peer-reviewed study, these two deep-water systems had never been genetically sampled at this scale. Across both canyons, the research team identified 226 species through environmental DNA metabarcoding, a technique that detects organisms from the genetic fragments they shed into surrounding water. The results, published in the journal Environmental DNA, suggest these canyons harbor a far richer deep-water community than anyone had documented.
What the expedition found
Voyage IN2026_V02, led by chief scientist Prof. Nicole Jones of the University of Western Australia, departed Fremantle on 17 March 2026 and returned on 17 April. Its primary mission was to quantify fine-scale ocean dynamics along the Ningaloo Coast, but the team integrated an autonomous genomic sampler into the instrument suite, collecting water at multiple depth layers from the surface to more than four kilometers down. By pairing the sampler with conductivity-temperature-depth casts, researchers could pin each genetic signature to a precise slice of the water column.
The remotely operated vehicle SuBastian, rated for depths to roughly 4,500 meters according to the Schmidt Ocean Institute, provided the visual component. It was during one of these deep dives that the ROV recorded the giant phantom jelly, known formally as Stygiomedusa gigantea. According to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, the species has been sighted only a handful of times in decades of deep-sea exploration worldwide. Its bell can span several meters, and its trailing oral arms give it a silhouette unlike anything else in the ocean.
In parallel, the genetic survey registered a clear signal for Architeuthis dux in canyon water samples. The metabarcoding pipeline amplifies short DNA fragments from the mixed genetic material in each sample and matches them against reference databases. The sequence data were strong enough for the authors to report a regional range extension for the giant squid, adding a headline predator to the known deep fauna of the Ningaloo canyons.
What scientists still do not know
For all the excitement, several important details remain unresolved. No primary ROV log or timestamped imagery metadata has been publicly released specifying the exact depth or position within the canyon system where the phantom jelly was filmed. Without that context, it is unclear whether the animal was cruising along a canyon wall, hovering above the floor, or drifting through open water far from any structure.
The peer-reviewed paper describes the broader survey results and confirms the Architeuthis dux detection, but it does not map that detection onto specific ROV transects. Whether the jelly footage and the squid DNA came from the same dive, the same wall, or simply the same canyon is not detailed in publicly available materials. The UWA repository entry for the study confirms the detection as a range extension but does not include raw eDNA read counts or sequence confidence thresholds tied to a specific sample location. Until those technical details are released, outside experts cannot fully rule out misassignment to a closely related squid species.
The “size of a bus” comparison draws on the known biology of Stygiomedusa gigantea, whose bell and arms can collectively extend to several meters. MBARI’s biological profiles provide that global size context, but no calibrated measurement from this particular encounter has been published. Without a laser scale or reference object in the frame, video-based size estimates are inherently approximate. The comparison is plausible given what the species is capable of, but it remains an estimate rather than a confirmed measurement.
There is also the question of residency. A single eDNA detection of giant squid does not prove a population lives in these canyons. The signal could reflect a transient individual or even DNA from a carcass carried in by currents. Likewise, one phantom jelly sighting cannot establish whether the species regularly inhabits these waters or was passing through from the broader Indian Ocean.
Why the Ningaloo canyons matter
The Ningaloo Coast is already recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage site for its shallow reef system, which supports whale sharks, manta rays, and hundreds of coral species. But the deep submarine canyons that plunge off the continental shelf just kilometers from that reef have received almost no biological attention. Cape Range Canyon drops to depths exceeding 4,000 meters within a short horizontal distance of the coast, creating a compressed gradient from tropical reef to abyssal darkness that is unusual anywhere in the world.
That proximity matters for conservation. Nutrients and organic material from the productive surface waters above Ningaloo Reef funnel down the canyon walls, potentially sustaining deep communities that are ecologically linked to the reef above. If the canyons support resident populations of rare megafauna, or serve as corridors for species like the giant squid, their protection could become a priority as Australia reviews its marine park boundaries. The 226-species inventory from this single voyage is a first step toward understanding what lives in these systems and what might be at stake.
What comes next for the canyon data
The research team, which includes co-investigators Georgia Nester and Zoe Richards at Curtin University, is expected to release more detailed data products from the voyage in the coming months. Those releases should include finer spatial mapping of eDNA detections, ROV transect logs, and potentially the raw sequence data that would allow independent verification of the giant squid identification. Additional voyages to the Ningaloo canyons are being discussed, which would help answer whether the phantom jelly and giant squid signals represent rare encounters or recurring features of a deep ecosystem that science is only beginning to map.
For now, the strongest conclusion the evidence supports is that these canyons host a richer and more depth-stratified community than anyone had previously recognized. The phantom jelly and the giant squid are the most dramatic examples, but they sit within a broader inventory of 226 species that collectively rewrite what is known about deep life off Western Australia’s coast. The canyons are not empty. They are full of animals that have simply been beyond reach until a robot went looking.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
