Underwater Crop Circles Are Actually Puffer Fish Love Nests
Underwater Crop Circles Are Actually Puffer Fish Love Nests
This is an underwater structure built about 80 feet underwater off the coast of the southern Japanese island of Anami Oshima. Considering no one had ever encountered anything like it, diver and underwater photographer Yoji Ookata was at a loss to explain what had built the circular, repeating, and clearly geometric structure. The architects of this feat of underwater engineering were discovered by Japanese broadcaster NHK, and the answer to what built the six and a half foot wide structure is at once mundane and really impressive.
The builder, it turns out, was a single ordinary — but exceptionally hard-working - pufferfish.
A film crew from NHK staked out this bizarre creation only to find that the entire structure was carved out by a single male pufferfish, tirelessly swinging his fin in the sand to create the grooves and ridges of the structure, which is many times the size of his own body. They also found that beyond just carving out the repeating shapes, he was also decorating the structure as he built it, peppering it with small stones and seashells.
Why would a pufferfish go through with all this trouble, you ask? Well, for the same, arguably one and only reason males of any species do anything ever — to attract a mate.