Two Moons on the Horizon: Artemis II and the Discovery of a New Moon Jellyfish Species
The deep-sea discovery of Aurelia profunda reminds us that Earth’s oceans remain a frontier as vast as the stars.
As the Artemis II mission prepares to carry humans looping around the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years, a different kind of lunar discovery has emerged much closer to home — deep beneath the surface of the Gulf.
While the world’s attention turns skyward, Dr. Maria Pia Miglietta, associate professor of marine biology at the College of Marine Sciences & Maritime Studies at Texas A&M University at Galveston, helped identify and discover a new “moon” much closer to home.
Deep within the Gulf, Miglietta identified and categorized a new species of moon jellyfish: Aurelia profunda. While the world looks to the skies to celebrate a new era of space exploration, this discovery serves as a reminder that the ocean’s “inner space” remains a frontier of its own.
“In the Gulf, we used to have three species of Aurelia,” said Miglietta. “Now we have four.”
Jellyfish in the Aurelia genus earned the nickname of “moon jellyfish” thanks to their translucent, moon-like bell, and are recognizable by the clover-like shape of their reproductive organs. Moon jellyfish are incredibly common, and — unlike some other species — lack the ability to penetrate human skin with their stinging cells, making them popular in aquarium exhibits and as “lab pets” for scientists.
“Aurelia are probably the best-studied group of jellyfish because they’re easy to keep in the lab.” Miglietta said. “They’re also everywhere around the world and look very nice, so they’re the ones that you often see in aquariums.”
The discovery was sparked by a single, fortuitous find by former A&M Galveston doctoral student Alexandra Frolova Ruthenbeck during a research expedition. While on a boat offshore near Louisiana, Frolova Ruthenbeck spotted a jellyfish that looked different from the common species that often bloom in the Gulf.
“I saw something pulsing in the water column near the boat lights. We scooped it up and it was a beautiful moon jellyfish carrying many larvae.” recalled Ruthenbeck. “What was kind of amazing, was that this was the only jellyfish we saw on the entire five-day cruise.”
The single specimen proved to be a biological gold mine. The specimen was not only never-before-seen, but also carrying larvae, a state Miglietta described as the jellyfish equivalent of being pregnant. This allowed Ruthenbeck to transport the jellyfish to the sea life facility at Texas A&M Galveston to attempt something rarely achieved: Documenting the entire life cycle of a new jellyfish species in a laboratory setting.
“All jellyfish come from a polyp,” Miglietta explained. While the floating medusa stage is easy to spot, the polyps are tiny organisms that live at the bottom of the ocean. “The 28 recognized species of Aurelia are mostly known from the medusae stage. Of those 28 species, only 13 of their polyps have been found in the wild.”
Jellyfish polyps being so elusive means that the life cycle of many Aurelia species remains a “black box”. That is compounded by the fact that the water conditions that trigger jellyfish reproduction are not fully understood, making cultivating a completely new species in a lab setting no small feat. By cultivating the larvae from the original find, Miglietta successfully grew hundreds of polyps, beginning the cycle anew.
The paper announcing a new species, published in Fall 2025, confirms that Aurelia profunda is distinct not just in its DNA, but in its lifestyle. Experiments revealed the polyps of the species are highly sensitive to temperature, thriving only in the cooler, deeper waters of the Gulf between 10 and 27 degrees Celsius. These parameters can help to narrow down where in the Gulf these Jellyfish bloom from, and its preference for depth earned the species its name, profunda.
The physical traits of Aurelia profunda also set it apart from other moon jellyfish. While the adults are smaller and more fragile than their coastal relatives, the newborns and polyps are among the largest ever recorded for the genus. The species also features unusually long oral tentacles—a potential adaptation for feeding or brooding larvae in the deep open water.
For the scientific community, the recent discovery of a new species within such a well-known group of creatures highlights the vast, still untapped biodiversity of the Gulf, and oceans as a whole.
“It gives you an idea of how much biodiversity there is that we don’t know,” Miglietta said. “It takes people being out there on the water to find it.”
Type specimens of Aurelia profunda—samples used to define the species at every step in its life cycle—are now archived at the Florida Museum in Gainesville, where they will be preserved for future generations of scientists to study.
As the Artemis II crew carries astronauts around the Moon, Aurelia profunda serves as a reminder: that whether 238,000 miles above or 200 meters below the surface, discovery remains a defining pursuit of science.
