Nature & Environment

Mystery of strange deep-sea golden 'egg' has finally been solved

By T.K. Randall
April 27, 2026 ·  2 comments

Image Credit: NOAA Ocean Exploration Around two years ago, we reported on a strange gold-colored 'egg' discovered by researchers during a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) deep-sea expedition.

Made of a thin, skin-like tissue, it was found approximately two miles beneath the surface of the Pacific off the coast of Alaska.

"Something tried to get in... or to get out," researchers said at the time.

Now, at last, scientists have finally been able to reveal what this golden 'egg' actually is - dead cells from the base of a giant deep-sea anemone known as Relicanthus daphneae.Actually figuring this out, however, had proven quite the challenge.

"We work on hundreds of different samples and I suspected that our routine processes would clarify the mystery," said zoologist Allen Collins - director of the NOAA Fisheries' National Systematics Laboratory.

"But this turned into a special case that required focused efforts and expertise of several different individuals. This was a complex mystery that required morphological, genetic, deep-sea and bioinformatics expertise to solve."

You can find out more about the discovery in the video below.


Source: NOAA.gov | Comments (2)

Tags: Ocean