Meet the PS134 Southern Ocean Jellyfish (SO-Jelly) team! Jellyfish were already collected from the Bellingshausen Sea 125 years ago on board the Belgica, the first known records for this area. Sixty-one specimens from five different species were then collected during the Belgian expedition. Only sporadic jellyfish sampling occurred in the Bellingshausen Sea, jellyfish being still largely understudied in the whole Southern Ocean. Following the footsteps of the Belgica, the goal of my jellyfish team on board of Polarstern is to fill this knowledge gap. Besides the deployment of plankton nets, the advances in molecular and modelling techniques allows nowadays for a much more in depth understanding of the distribution, diversity, ecology, trophic role, and genetic connectivity of Antarctic jellyfish. From CTD deployments to collect water samples of different depths for environmental DNA analyses, to the collection, sorting, photographing of specimens, follow a day in the life of jellyfish researchers with this video.
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