You can also find eyes in the sea if you know where to look for them. Fortunately, these strange spheres are not the result of some kind of infection, but rather a type of algae called Valonia ventricosa, which is also one of the largest single-celled organisms on Earth.
The species of algae known by its civilian name only as bubble algae or marine eyeball can range in size from blobs the size of a pinhead to the size of a human eyeball. Its size depends on the content of the cell’s fluid lumen, i.e. the space inside the cell wall. IFLScience.
The ventricle is single-celled, but may contain the nucleus of many cells. This is because it consists of a mass of cytoplasm containing many nuclei, and is not separated by a cell wall.
The unusual design makes for a fun party trick. Popping a sailor’s eyeball, I mean algae, can actually lead to more phalonia. ventricosa jumps out because it only needs a single nucleus to evolve into new organisms, Science Alert reports.
They sometimes have huge cytoplasmic cores radiating from the center, creating an internal anatomy that the New Sky Coral Reef Conservation Program describes as a “Tesla plasma field.”
Sailors’ eyeballs are frequently spotted by divers exploring coral reefs in tropical and subtropical regions of the world’s oceans. Their color can vary from light green to black and sometimes very silver due to the unique structure of the cellulose crystals in their cell walls.
The shimmering color is reminiscent of NOAA Ocean Exploration’s “Golden Egg” mystery, when a bright, spherical, alien-like object was found at the bottom of the Alaskan sea. The bright object was discovered at a depth of 3.1 kilometers, and is attached to a rocky surface. Most notably, the mysterious object had a hole in it, prompting one researcher to say during the live broadcast that “something was trying to get in…or get out of here.”
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