This is Part 2 of our story about how cunning aquarists and colleagues cracked the code of comb jelly culture. Click here for Part 1.

Untangling comb jelly culture was a little fishy.

Even with decades of attempts, finding the Golidlocks point for cold-water comb jellies to feel “just right” and reproduce was as elusive as ever. But then, in March 2015, Senior Aquarist Wyatt Patry joined a Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI) expedition, led by marine biologist Dr. Steve Haddock, in the Gulf of California. 

And it just so happened that, Dr. William Browne—a professor at the University of Miami studying comb jellies from an evolutionary biology angle—was also onboard.

“Literally within 10 minutes of meeting, we delved into Mnemiopsis culturing,” Wyatt says.

In our exhibits, the aquarists had been feeding adult comb jellies—which are hermaphroditic, both male and female at the same time—baby brine shrimp and tiny crustaceans called copepods.

But Dr. Browne told Wyatt the key to keeping baby comb jellies alive is to feed their parents larval fishes.

Wyatt quickly got in touch with MacKenzie and advised her to switch the comb jelly feed to newborn zebrafish. Suddenly, MacKenzie’s innovative spawning methods worked.

“As soon as we started feeding the adults larval fish, we had super-healthy adults, and the quality and quantity of embryos exploded,” she says.

Where previous efforts had produced on the order of 10 baby comb jellies, the team was now spawning hundreds—even topping 1,000 at one point. 

“We grew so many that we had to find homes for them all,” Wyatt says. “Then we started applying the methods to other species.” 

After spawning three generations of Mnemiopsis in the Jelly Lab, the Aquarium team moved on to other species of comb jellies. The new method worked beautifully for Bolinopsis infundibulum and Pleurobrachia bachei, two popular display species.

Now, the jelly team is working closely with Dr. Browne to co-author a paper sharing this new culturing protocol with other scientists and organisations interested in starting their own comb jelly crop. 

Mackenzie for one is thrilled: “Comb jellies are awesome for so many reasons. I really hope there’s a comb jelly craze!”

A bloom of ctenophores in labs and aquariums worldwide may well shed a large radiating light on the massively understudied gelatinous community of the world ocean. 

Humans are confined to a life battling gravity. We’re surrounded by sturdy species that hold their form out of water, so we’ve naturally gravitated towards an appreciation of “solid” ocean animals, from whales to fish and crabs or squid. 

But the gooey, wiggly and jiggly locomoting loogies of the sea—like salps, pysoromes, siphonophores, larvaceans and pteropods [Editor’s note: those are are real worlds that describe actual animals]—were in the ocean first. And they’re still hard at work to this day.

From planktonic predators to prey for pelagic players, be it the ocean sunfish or the leatherback sea turtle, comb jellies and their mucus mates are integral parts of our planet’s daily show. And now that ctenophores have one less secret, we may soon learn just what it can mean to be an Earthling.

Thanks for reading everyone! If you’d rather veg out with this story, you can watch the video below!