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World's Most Confused Fish Gets Stuck INSIDE A Jellyfish

You've Probably Never Seen A Fish INSIDE A Jellyfish Before
Tim Samuel Photography

It's every photographer's dream to capture a once-in-a-lifetime shot that leaves viewers in total awe.

For Australian photographer Tim Samuel, a self-described "ocean lover," that moment came in December while snorkeling off Byron Bay, in New South Wales, when he stumbled across a fish stuck inside a jellyfish.

"I really had never seen anything quite like this," Samuel told The Huffington Post in an email. "Lucky I had my camera on me, this seems like a once in a lifetime find."

Samuel says the fish was actually controlling some of the jellyfish's movements from within.

"It was interesting to see how the two of them moved through the water," he told HuffPost. "The fish propelled the jellyfish, but wobbled around and was being thrown off course by the jellyfish, and sometimes was forced to swim in circles."

Ian Tibbetts, a marine biologist at the Centre for Marine Science at the University of Queensland, said the fish is thought to be a juvenile trevally, which are known to hide among the stingers of certain jellyfish to protect themselves from predators.

This little guy, however, might have gotten too close.

"It's difficult to tell whether disaster has just struck, or whether the fish is happy to be in there," Tibbetts told Australian Geographic. "Although by the photographer's description of the fish swimming, my guess is that it is probably quite happy to be protected in there."

In an email to HuffPost, Dr. Robert Kinzie III, a professor of biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, confirmed the fish was a carangid (the fish family of which trevally are members) and said the juvenile animal is not actually stuck. Instead, it "can settle out under the umbrella of a jellyfish" and is likely capable of finding food while there as well.

“The arrangement is similar to the clownfish use of anemones," Dr. Brian Bowen, a researcher at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, added in an email to HuffPost.

Samuels told CNN that while it was a difficult decision, he decided to not interfere and "let nature run its course." In other words, just keep swimming, little trevally, just keep swimming.

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