BY TYLER DURDEN
SATURDAY, NOV 07, 2026 – 07:40 AM
The "golden orb" that stumped NOAA’s deep-sea team in 2023 is the discarded base of a giant deep-sea anemone, according to a preprint posted to bioRxiv on April 21 and a NOAA release the next day.
The orb turned up on Aug. 30, 2023, on Dive 7 of the Seascape Alaska 5 expedition, when the remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer, working from NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, came across a gold, mound-shaped object with a hole in it, attached to a rock in the Gulf of Alaska at about 3,250 meters. A videographer first called it a "yellow hat," NOAA Ocean Exploration said at the time, and the team’s guesses ran from a dead sponge to a coral to an egg casing.
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