WILD EVIDENCE
Case file 004May 5, 2017About 435 m (1,427 ft)

Brittle Stars Were Supposed to Be Scavengers. Then They Caught a Squid.

Off Jarvis Island in the Pacific, a NOAA robot filmed seafloor animals taking a swimming squid out of the water and fighting over it.

Pale brittle stars with long spiny arms tangled together on a sandy seafloor
Brittle stars converge on the squid. Image: NOAA Ocean Exploration, Mountains in the Deep: Exploring the Central Pacific Basin.

Brittle stars look like starfish drawn with a thinner pen: a small central disc and five long, flexible, spiny arms. They cover parts of the deep seafloor, and they were thought to make their living mainly by scavenging.

On May 5, 2017, NOAA's remotely operated vehicle was exploring a ridge off the southeast side of Jarvis Island, an uninhabited island in the central Pacific, about 435 meters down. The same dive went on to find six dense coral communities. First, the cameras recorded something the science team had not seen before.

A brittle star spreads its arms across the seafloor beside a dark coral bush
The seafloor on this ridge is crowded with brittle stars. Image: NOAA Ocean Exploration, Mountains in the Deep: Exploring the Central Pacific Basin.

What the camera recorded

  1. A small squid, identified as a species of Abralia, swims just above a patch of seafloor crowded with brittle stars.
  2. A brittle star catches the squid with its arms and pulls it to the bottom.
  3. Other brittle stars close in, and the animals struggle with each other over the squid.
  4. The squid is eaten.
A brittle star on sand with a small dark-eyed squid held among its arms
The squid, lower right, held among the arms of a brittle star. Image: NOAA Ocean Exploration, Mountains in the Deep: Exploring the Central Pacific Basin.

Why scientists cared

Catching a swimming animal is a different thing from eating what drifts down. NOAA described what the brittle stars did as a deliberate act of predation and called the footage a "once in a lifetime" observation. The clip was released under the title "Brutal Brittle Stars."

What nobody knows yet

How often this happens when no camera is present. Brittle stars are among the most common animals on parts of the deep seafloor. If they regularly take live prey from the water above them, their role in deep-sea food webs is different from the one scientists had assumed.

How this was recorded

The footage comes from NOAA's 2017 expedition Mountains in the Deep: Exploring the Central Pacific Basin. It was filmed by the remotely operated vehicle Deep Discoverer, working from the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer, and NOAA later featured it in its collection of notable feeding events.

The record

Date
May 5, 2017
Location
Ridge off the southeast side of Jarvis Island, Pacific Ocean
Depth / setting
About 435 m (1,427 ft)
Camera
ROV Deep Discoverer, NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer
Animals
Brittle stars (Ophiuroidea); squid (Abralia sp.)
Footage
NOAA Ocean Exploration, Mountains in the Deep: Exploring the Central Pacific Basin
Rights
Public domain (U.S. Government work)

Sources

Published 2026-11-15 · Corrections: contact@wildevidence.com

More case files

The face of a polar bear fills the frame, its dark eye and black nose inches from the camera, with sea ice behind
Case 008 · April 12, 2014

A Second Polar Bear Walked Up to One Wearing a Camera and Looked Straight Into the Lens

The collar camera was there to record how a female polar bear spends her days. On April 12, 2014, it recorded who came to see her.

A bull elk with its head lowered pushes against the front of a parked SUV in a row of cars
Case 007 · Fall rut (clips undated)

A 700-Pound Bull Elk Worked His Way Down a Row of Parked Cars

Every fall at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone, bull elk in the rut turn on vehicles. The National Park Service filmed it.

View from a camera under a polar bear's chin: white fur at the top of the frame above turquoise water at the edge of the sea ice
Case 006 · April 14, 2014

A Polar Bear Wearing a Camera Went Under the Sea Ice. Then There Was Blood on the Snow.

In April 2014, scientists fitted four female polar bears off Alaska with video collars. It was the first time anyone had seen the sea ice from a polar bear's point of view.