See-Through Sea Creatures

Sönke Johnsen scuba dives in the middle of the ocean, far from land, miles above the seafloor. There are no shipwrecks to explore, no reefs to admire, just a disorienting oasis of blue.

What he looks for is hard to see. Indeed, he and his companions often stare intently at one another, searching for distortions passing among them, slightly more visible against the dark color of a wet suit. And then they carefully catch them and place them in glass jars.

“You’d be surrounded with all these animals,” said Dr. Johnsen, a professor of biology at Duke. “But you could barely see them, because they were transparent.”

Read more from Kenneth Chang in The New York Times.