Sideways

This jellyfish spends its life lying on its back.

It settles on the bottom in shallow, warm water, on mangrove edges, mudflats and turtle grass, bell down, arms up, and farms sunlight. The frilly arms are full of the same tiny algae that corals keep, and for most of its days it does not so much hunt as garden, pulsing gently to keep the water moving over them.

This one was doing none of that. It was swimming, in open water, upright, bell first, arms trailing, caught on the way up from a long boat dive off Bangka. Seen from the side, the banded rim of the bell and the frilled arms make a shape that nobody who has only seen it on the sand would recognise. Lit with a narrow beam so the water behind it goes to black. An animal built to lie still, photographed on the move.